


Tjelvar Stornsnasson in The Cut Glass Cutlass Caper

by Arazsya



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Adventure, Drowning risk, Gas - Freeform, M/M, Pre-Slash, Traps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:26:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21891151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: After the end of the world, Tjelvar and Edward search for a lost pirate's treasure.
Relationships: Edward Keystone/Tjelvar Stornsnasson
Comments: 16
Kudos: 51
Collections: Rusty Quill Secret Santa 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bittercape (bittercape)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bittercape/gifts).



There is nothing on his table. It had never occurred to Tjelvar that that would one day be a problem – he’d grown up in a comfortably cluttered home, and in the years since he’d left he’d always been able to cover whatever surface he was presented with in maps and journals and transcriptions. His work, an ever-expanding wealth of knowledge on Hannibal’s tomb, all to be considered in his search, laid out before him. Then there had been the artefacts, to study and learn from.

Then there had been nothing, for a time, and there still is. The plain wood, polished to a high lustre, starts to rankle after about ten minutes.

He knows he’s been inert. It’s even more obvious, this time of year. The university is moving into a new term, with a new crop of students, writing new essays, having new experiences. The world moves back towards normal, and Tjelvar Stornsnasson doesn’t know how to move with it.

Instead, he traces the wood grain with his fingertips, and his mind follows the idea of a similar pattern, faint and blue and gleaming, running its course just under his skin, hollowing away everything he had ever been. He doesn’t want to think it to the end of the line, and find whatever’s waiting for him there – needs something to put between him and it, so he can heal like everyone else is, but he has nothing.

Hieroglyphics, he thinks. Howard Carter’s trying to use his newfound respectability to start up some digs around the Valley of the Kings, and his Late Egyptian could do with some work – it’s always been faltering, required constant dictionary references, and he’d had his nose too deep in his Latin textbook to care. He could make himself useful there, at least, while he looks for something else to chase down on his own.

It was something he’d been wanting to ask Frobisher about, but Frobisher’s late, probably consoling some homesick new student or other, which leaves Tjelvar alone in the café, nursing his tea like it’s three parts orcish moonshine. He wishes for maps or fractured inscriptions or lost cities, and all there is is a spill of sugar, the grains sticking to his fingers.

He moves his mug across the table through it, and the scrape of ceramic on wood does nothing to alleviate anything. It seems to carry on for a moment, after he stops moving, and he frowns, takes far too long to recognise the sound of someone clearing their throat.

It’s one of the café’s employees, a slightly nervous-looking young man in a nondescript uniform. Tjelvar does his best to offer a disarming smile, but he doubts it has the effect he wants. It feels too unpractised, doesn’t fit properly – he’s not sure what the blue veins had used his face for, but he knows it wasn’t right. Doesn’t feel like his again yet, and he’s sure that, along with his scar, it must form a rather unpleasant picture.

“Mr Stornsnasson?” The man asks, squinting down at a piece of paper in his hand – somewhere else to look. Tjelvar is glad he has it, he supposes.

“Yes?” Tjelvar says.

“Friend of yours sent a message over,” he says, holding out the note, and to his credit, he manages to not go as far as putting it down on the table and backing away. “It’s urgent, apparently.”

Tjelvar takes it, and the man flees before he can thank him. He only makes it three paces before he’s stopped by another customer – Tjelvar hears something about an issue with the soup, and stops listening.

The note is a quick, rushed thing, scribbled down on the same kind of paper that the café writes its receipts on, and it takes him a moment to get used to the handwriting.

 _Tjelvar_ , it reads. _Message for you from Kent. Didn’t leave his name, but was very insistent that you should come as soon as possible, apparently regarding an artefact. I got the impression there might have been a theft of some kind, but it was all a bit vague. Booked you a train ticket. Best of luck._

The address is printed more carefully below, probably with the intention that he’ll be able to show it to a cab driver once he gets off the train. Tjelvar wants to be offended by the assumptions – apparently it’s already been decided that he’s going, despite there being next to no detail, never having been consulted, not even knowing who’s trying to contact him – but the feeling just doesn’t seem to register.

He gathers his things and is out of his chair a minute later, leaving his tea half-drunk. Maybe it is just a prank or a wild goose chase or some other fool’s errand, but at this point he’d have taken a nefarious plot from an old enemy trying to exact revenge for a score gone wrong. There’s just nothing else for him to do.

* * *

The address takes him to a small terraced house in Ashford, Kent – it’s nice enough, the door painted a bright, cheerful blue, window boxes hanging at the sills, mostly bare but one of them with the tentative heads of a few snowdrops. Tjelvar uses a knocker shaped like a wide-eyed, grimacing gargoyle, and waits.

There’s a few seconds of nothing, and then the door is pulled inwards, revealing a pretty young woman, smartly dressed, as if she’s on her way out to work. She considers Tjelvar, and manages an uncertain smile.

“Hello,” she says, her voice carrying a barely-detectable Scottish accent. “Can I help you?”

“Hello,” Tjelvar replies, considers attempting a smile of his own, but it hadn’t worked very well in the café and there’s no reason why it would here. He settles for a polite nod, tries to keep himself relaxed and unthreatening. “Tjelvar Stornsnasson, I had a message about a stolen artefact?”

“Oh!” Anything that might have been apprehension slides off her face so easily that Tjelvar can see no trace of it left. “Yes! I wasn’t quite expecting – please, come in! Thank you so much for coming all this way at such short notice, I’m told you’re an expert at this sort of thing. I was worried you might be too busy.” She steps aside, and ushers him in. “Jacqueline Grace.”

Once the door is closed again, she whisks past him again, leading him through to the front room – it’s dark in there, the curtains drawn across, even though it’s not even dusk yet outside. It’s cosy, a comfortable level of clutter, the fire lit and crackling behind a protective grille. Angled towards it is a sofa, and sitting there, awkwardly holding a delicate teacup like he can’t work out how he’s supposed to drink from it, is a man in half-plate armour. He looks up as Tjelvar enters, and his face breaks into a smile so bright and genuine that Tjelvar’s chest would have ached, if it hadn’t been for how familiar it is.

“Edward,” he says, flat and taut. “What are you doing here?”

“Tjelvar!” Edward puts down the cup so fast that the tea slops over the edge, and bounces to his feet like he’s been spring-loaded. He holds out his hand to shake – Tjelvar looks down at it, and then back up, dismissing it.

“Edward was the one who suggested contacting you,” Miss Grace says, apparently not noticing the temperature of the room decreasing. Maybe that’s only been for Tjelvar. “The Church of Apollo has been very helpful – the police just came and made notes and left again, I think they’re still dealing with the aftermath of… everything. Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”

“They try,” Tjelvar says, trying not to let it veer too dismissive. “Just water, thanks.”

Miss Grace nods and ducks out of the room – Tjelvar sees it in the periphery of his vision, still staring at Edward.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he says. Edward’s still just watching him, expression like a midsummer day, warm and absolutely useless. “What are you _doing here_?”

Edward finally drops his hand.

“The Church sent me,” he says. “I’m helping.”

“Right,” Tjelvar says, and if Edward hears the despairing note in his voice, he doesn’t give any indication. “Of course.” He swallows, takes a second to centre himself. “What about this artefact, then?”

“Her grandfather’s telescope,” Edward says, pointing towards a conspicuously bare spot on the mantelpiece, flanked a pair of small clay dragon figures, that Tjelvar thinks might be intended to be Apophis and Guivres. “It’s well old.”

Tjelvar closes his eyes, briefly, and considers turning around and walking back to the university.

“But it’s not just that,” Edward goes on – he steps past Tjelvar, picks something up from behind Apophis, knocking it into the tiny Mertiocrat’s tail on the way past, and proffers it to him. “Look at this. It’s the lens from the telescope.”

Tjelvar looks. It’s a small disc of clear stone – probably some kind of quartz or crystal, curved across the face and highly polished. It’s not quite perfectly circular, and reminds him more of lenses that have been found from Ancient Egypt or Assyria than anything as modern as a telescope.

“What of it?” Tjelvar asks. It’s an anachronism, and almost certainly not suited for use in a telescope, nowhere near as clear as the glass equivalent, but Miss Grace hardly looks to be the seafaring type, and likely wouldn’t have cause to care.

Edward leans back from him a little, angling the lens up towards the ceiling – he mutters something under his breath that Tjelvar can’t quite make out, perhaps a word of encouragement to the stone or a request for aid from Apollo. There’s nothing for another second – Edward shoots a glance at Tjelvar that’s almost anxious, as if he’s outright waiting for there to keep being nothing, for Tjelvar to scold him – and then light.

It’s so bright that Tjelvar flinches, his eyes used to the dim. Edward mumbles an apology, which he ignores. Manages to look again a few seconds later, and finds that the bright amber flash has dulled into a gentle violet-glow, shining out from the lens and casting patterns across the ceiling. Tjelvar cranes his neck back to study them, and their reality slots into place in his head almost instantly.

“It’s a map,” he says, hushed. Britain, slightly different from how it looks now, but still recognisable. He glances sideways at Edward, and finds him grinning again.

“Yes!” he declares, and points up at section of Scotland with his free hand. “I thought so – that’s why I asked for you. You’re really good at this stuff, right?”

Tjelvar follows his gesture, and notices a brighter point on the map, hazing through the full spectrum of colours at the edges of it, irregular against the patterns of Miss Grace’s ceiling.

“Could I… see that?” Tjelvar asks, reaching for the lens. Edward hands it to him, with far less reverence than Tjelvar takes it with, and the second that it’s no longer in contact with his skin, the room plunges into darkness again, save for the low flickering from the fireplace.

Tjelvar takes it to the window, and pulls aside enough of the curtain to study it in the proper light. There’s no sign of a catch, no etched symbol, no pattern inscribed on the inside. All he can see through it is the hazy shape of his own hand.

“Are you trying to make it work?” Miss Grace asks, stepping back through the doorway, carrying a glass of water and a small plate of biscuits. “Edward’s the only one who’s been able to do it so far.” She directs a significant glance towards Edward that he doesn’t seem to notice, still watching Tjelvar with the beginnings of a hopeful smile – the way her eyes linger on him curdles a little in Tjelvar’s gut, feels almost like impatience.

“What can you tell me about the telescope?” Tjelvar asks, pulling the curtain the rest of the way back. In the natural light, Edward’s face looks different from how he remembers – there’s a dark brush of sleeplessness under his eyes, new scars pushing out from below his collar, ragged and white. Whatever had left them, Tjelvar thinks, had not been playing.

He clears his throat, and angles his head back down towards the lens, turning it in his fingers. It stays pointedly dull.

“I don’t really know much about it, I’m afraid,” Miss Grace says, setting the glass and plate down on the coffee table. “It was my grandfather’s.”

“Was he a sailor?” Tjelvar prompts.

“No,” she says. “Bookbinder by trade.”

“Did he have any use for a telescope at all? Or any sort of interest in any kind of profession that would require it?” Tjelvar pauses, his train of thought broken by the crunch as Edward bites into one of the biscuits. “Hobbies?”

“No.” She offers an uncertain shrug. “He was mostly interested in family history. Finding out where we came from, you know?”

“Was it inherited, then?” Tjelvar asks.

“He had it made,” Miss Grace says, slowly at first, but gaining in confidence. “I was… younger, but I remember the day he brought it home – he was so excited to show it to all of us, but when he let me look at it I couldn’t see anything. I thought I was just using it wrong, so I didn’t say anything. Everyone else must have been too polite.”

“Right,” Tjelvar says. “And do you remember whether he had the lens before?”

“It was a long time ago,” she says, almost apologetic. “This was his house, though – there used to be a box where the telescope was, I think, but we weren’t allowed to touch it. The lens never fit right in there though – I only inherited it last month, an since then it’s fallen out at least six times. I meant to glue it back in, but I’ve been trying to sort things out with the solicitor and I didn’t get around to it before…”

“Ah.” Tjelvar pauses, and it stretches into an awkward hesitation. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” she says. “They, um.” She coughs, reaches for one of the biscuits. “They were professionals, the police thought – didn’t even break the locks picking them.”

“They didn’t take anything else,” Edward reports. “Just the telescope.”

“That was all they were after, then.” Tjelvar moves to pick up his water glass, covering the time that he needs to think. They’d probably been after the lens, and missed it. Obviously, the map leads to something desirable. What he needs is context. “Do you still have any of your grandfather’s family history?”

“Yes,” she says, starting to edge towards the doorway again, eyes a little too bright. “It’s upstairs – do you need to see it?”

“Please,” Tjelvar says, and she nods, ducks out again. Probably glad of the excuse to be by herself for a moment – it can’t have been easy for her, to lose her grandfather and for one of his prized possessions to be stolen, within such a short space of time. He turns his attention back towards Edward, and represses a wince at the sight of him scratching at one of those scars. “You called me here because you want to follow the map?”

“Yeah.” Edward blinks, his hand stilling. “I thought it would be your sort of thing. And they didn’t take anything else, so they must have wanted the map, so maybe if we go there, we’ll find them, and we can get the telescope back for Miss Grace.”

“And how would they know to get there?” Tjelvar pushes. “If they don’t have the map?”

“Oh.” Edward’s expression starts to fall. “They wouldn’t. But – we have to follow the map anyway, don’t we? I mean, you want to?”

Tjelvar hesitates. It’s hard to judge _what_ he wants to do. Following an unprovenanced map to an unknown goal is certainly more than he had been doing, sitting around and listening to Frobisher sigh his way through marking the early term essays. Maybe nothing, maybe something, but that’s hardly anything more than what he’d come here on in the first place. Then again, an afternoon spent following up on a report of a stolen artefact isn’t quite the same as travelling halfway across the country.

But he can still feel that bright point on the map in his head, see the afterimage of it on his retina, a glowing counterpoint to the tracery of veins he still feels in his sleep.

“We’ll see,” he says.

Edward’s brow knits tighter, and he opens his mouth to say something, closes it again. Hesitates, repeats.

Miss Grace returns before he manages to come up with anything, carrying a thick, heavy folder. She hands it to Tjelvar, and he takes it, sits. Edward takes the place next to him, and picks up his teacup again.

The first of the papers is not old enough – he can see Jacqueline Grace, written in a careful child’s hand and captioned with the practiced script of an adult, the family tree rising up the page – Alfred Grace’s work, he assumes, noting the name two branches up from hers. It’s meticulous work, but it doesn’t go back far enough to account for the lens, and there are no names in it that he recognises as those of prominent archaeologists.

He starts to flip through it, passing old newspaper articles, copies of birth and death certificates, obscure census records, vaguely aware of voices beyond the realm of his concentration. He follows the family back, as far as the moment that Miss Grace’s great great great grandfather had moved down from Scotland, and further, skipping through years of history in seconds as she and Edward talk.

It runs out, eventually, though, manages to coincide with the phrase _oh, please call me Jacqueline_ filtering through past Tjelvar’s concentration. He accidentally creases the page he’s looking at, and notices that it’s a completely different texture – it’s a number of passages, copied from historical textbooks with names underlined. A difficult, dense text, even for Tjelvar, especially when the sound of Miss Grace’s laughter filters through to him, but it seems like it concerns the life of a pirate, relatively early in the rule of the Meritocrats. It’s only a handful of extracts, and the name that Alfred had been marking out was that of his cook.

Tjelvar flips back to the last copy of the lineage, frowning. To go this far back, Alfred Grace would have needed a lot of records, and usually the only ones lucky enough for those to exist, intact and locatable, are those from prominent families, but none of the names are familiar. Magic might have helped, Tjelvar supposes, but this is a project that would still have taken years.

“What do you know about Sherden?” he asks – from the lull before anyone responds, he’s fairly certain he’s just interrupted something, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“What’s that?” Miss Grace asks, eventually.

“Your grandfather did a lot of research into him,” Tjelvar says, lifts up the folder to point at the copies.

“And that’s going to help you find his telescope?”

“Maybe.” Tjelvar puts the file back down on the coffee table, leans back over it. “Whoever came here was after the telescope specifically – it seems like they knew more about it than you do. If I can understand what they did, work out who would have known to take it and why – it can hardly hurt.”

“Okay.” She hesitates, glances over at Edward. “There are a lot more books and thinks in the attic – I might need some help bringing them down, though.”

 _Might you_ , Tjelvar thinks, bites it back. It’s not unreasonable – he knows from experience how quickly a weight of books can build up.

“If you could, Eddie?” he suggests, instead, when he looks up and finds Edward watching him as though waiting for his permission.

“Yes,” Edward says, shaking his head like he’s been pulled out of something. “‘Course.”

Tjelvar leans forward over the file again, and does his best to start concentrating again.

* * *

Tjelvar steps off the train, and the chill starts to bite at him immediately. His bag is heavy over his shoulders, the borrowed book he’d been reading awkward against his shoulders. He glances around, reaches out a hand to help Edward down, but Edward’s already past him – he strides out into the street like he finds the cold invigorating. Remembering how he’d been in the Alps, he probably does.

“Eddie,” Tjelvar says, covering his aborted gesture by adjusting his scarf around his neck. “Not that way.”

“Right,” Edward says, and stops in his tracks, apparently unbothered by it. He takes the moment to look around him, breathes in like the air isn’t hitting his lungs like a knife. “It’s nice here. I like it.”

“Hm?” Tjelvar glances about – the landscape sweeps up around the tiny town, rising into mountains. The horizon’s lost, obscured by the brooding weight of them. Somewhere, up above, there’s a faint shaft of sunlight striking at a hillside, so far off that Tjelvar can’t even make out a break in the clouds.

“It’s like where we were before,” Edward says. “France. With the mountains.”

“Quite,” Tjelvar says – he’s sure there are geographers who could list off differences until the cows came home, but he doesn’t intend to try to explain any of them to Edward. “I, er, I believe the inn was this way.”

Edward pauses for another long, wistful moment, then scrambles to catch up when Tjelvar starts to walk past him. Much of his attention seems to stay on the landscape, though, apparently not noticing that his breath is turning to mist in the air in front of him.

“Keep an eye out for anything that looks… old,” Tjelvar says, less sharply than he means to.

“Most of it looks old,” Edward points out, still cheerful – no singing yet, though, and Tjelvar supposes that he’ll take what mercies he can get.

“ _Older_ , then.” Tjelvar quickens his pace, hoping to instil Edward with some level of urgency. “Unless whoever marked that place on the map buried whatever they were marking, it would need to be something they’d think would stand the test of time, like a temple or an important landmark.”

“All right.” Edward keeps up with him easily – Tjelvar glances sideways at him, and his brain starts at the shock of his scars again, not quite able to get used to them. “What were you reading, then, on the train?”

“One of the books that Miss Grace’s grandfather had,” Tjelvar says, raising his voice and looking away. “About Sherden – mostly not peer-reviewed, he seems to have been a largely obscure figure, but Professor Hamilton, the author, seems to have been very focussed on him. He was a notorious figure in the early days of the Meritocracy, indiscriminately attacking and robbing ships, largely around the Mediterranean Sea. Famed for his cruelty, apparently, and his sadism – according to the legends, his weapon was made of glass, so that no moment of his victims’ suffering would be hidden from him.”

“So he was evil?”

“Not necessarily.” Tjelvar squints at the street ahead, searching for a sign for the Duke’s Head – surely, he thinks, it can’t be much further – Pinebridge is tiny even by the standards of the towns he usually encounters on his expeditions, the station barely more than a cleared field with a painted board in it. “But he was certainly… doing evil things. According to the pieces of legend that Hamilton collected, mostly from the oral tradition, his ship was wrecked off the coast of Scotland while attempting to flee from Guivres, and the few surviving crew – which included Miss Grace’s ancestor – hid among the local people. According to the legend, he killed half of them on the ship so there would be room in the lifeboats for his treasure.”

“Were there not any paladins?” Edward frowns at him, apparently utterly unable to process the idea of behaviour like that continuing unchecked.

“I’m sure there were…” Tjelvar pauses, skips past the idea of attempting to explain to Edward the slow process of the Greek Pantheon coming over to Britain, at first at with traders and explorers from the European mainland, the consideration of the gods already present. It’s a subject for another day, when he’s not trying to stuff his hands into his pockets in an effort not to lose them. “None like you. Anyway, Sherden lived in Scotland for a long time, comfortably and largely uneventfully. Something must have happened, though, because it’s said that when he was on his deathbed, he had with him a man of the gods and was filled with regret for what he’d done. He repented for all that he could, and had his treasure hidden away where it could never be used for evil purposes again.”

“Oh.” Edward sounds largely unbothered, as if the reason they’re there doesn’t even matter all that much to him. “Well, all’s well that ends well, right Tjelvar?”

“Given that we’re here, it’s more of a beginning.” Tjelvar peers into the distance again, and thinks he catches sight of a swinging sign with a stylised figure on it. “Given that someone thought the telescope was worth stealing, I think that whoever took it believes that this is a trail laid to find Sherden’s lost treasure.”

“But if he didn’t want it to be used–”

“He didn’t want it to be used by someone _evil_ , Edward,” Tjelvar corrects him, and nearly cutting him off as he veers them in the right direction. “The map only worked for you, remember? I imagine it checks for evil much as you do.”

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense.” Edward slows a little to let him pass, still good-natured. He should be different, Tjelvar thinks, should be suspicious and angry and ready to fight against anything else that wants to leave scars like that on him. “You’re not evil either, and neither was Miss Grace. I checked.”

“Of course you did. And, good to know, but there’s being not evil, and there’s being a _paladin_.”

“Well, if it was just checking for being a paladin, yeah, but–”

“We’re here.” Tjelvar gestures, and then pushes at the door without giving Edward a chance to respond. It’s been a long enough walk – the inn is right on the edge of town, and he’s hoping it’ll have a fire large enough for him to thaw out his fingers against. It will have, he expects, a wonderful view out across the landscape, which Edward would probably appreciate. He steps inside, leaving Edward trailing after him, and heads for the bar, ignoring the turned faces of the other patrons.

“Hello,” he says, to the man standing behind it. “I booked a room earlier – Tjelvar Stornsnasson?”

“Yeah.” The man considers him for a long moment, then Edward beyond him, respectable in his paladin’s armour, and breathes out hard through his nose. He reaches under the bar, keeps his eyes on them a moment longer than he needs to. “It’s the first door on your left once you’re up the stairs. Breakfast’s at seven sharp if you want it. If you don’t there’s a couple of cafés off main street.”

“Thank you.” Tjelvar takes the key he’s offered, glances back to make sure that Edward’s still following, and pushes away from it.

The stairs are narrow, cramped, and probably the bane of the local drunks. Their door doesn’t look like it would stand up to more than a few firm shoves from a strong shoulder, so he makes a mental note to find a hiding place inside for anything they do manage to find. The lock works smoothly enough, at least, and the room beyond is small, the furnishings pushing it into cosy, rather than cramped.

Edward wanders past him to stand in the window, peering out – as Tjelvar had predicted, the view beyond is lovely, a rectangle of bleak open country that Edward seems to appreciate. Tjelvar locks the door behind him, turns back into the room, and swallows a heavy sigh when he notices that his request for a twin room had obviously been misunderstood. The double bed is neatly quilted and fills most of the room, barely leaving room for the single chair against the far wall.

He excuses himself – he needs some time to himself, and decides that he needs to find himself a map of the area. The barman recommends trying in the town hall, so Tjelvar braves the outside again, this time alone. He appreciates it, he supposes, though the crisp cold air is still far too sharp in his chest. Time to think, away from Edward. To pay proper attention to what he’s looking at.

The oldest building he sees on the way is a small structure dedicated to Poseidon, somewhere halfway between a shrine and a church. They’re only too happy to help him out in the town hall, though, a cheerful gnomish woman engaging him in conversation, very interested to meet a stranger and an archaeologist. She circles on the map she gives him the oldest parts of town she’s aware of, and wishes him a pleasant holiday.

He feels the time ticking away the whole time he’s with her, wants to get back to the room as much as he’d wanted to leave it in the first place, and decides it’s because he probably shouldn’t leave Edward alone for too long. He needn’t have worried – when he returns, he finds Edward still at the window, sitting on the floorboards in the last shrinking square of light. There’s a small book in his hands, a sun and lyre symbol embossed on the cover.

Beyond the pane, the sun has started to go down over the mountains, and when he looks around at Tjelvar, the amber light catches his face, casts his eyes in a new shade that Tjelvar’s sure he’s seen in ancient glassware.

He starts to stand, and Tjelvar makes a vague prohibitive gesture, clearing his throat.

“No need to, ah, get up,” he says. “Finish your…” He’s not entirely sure what Edward had been doing, if it was some sort of important prayer that had to be done at sunset, or if he’d just decided it was a good time to read.

“It’s fine,” Edward says, straightening up, his face falling into shadow. “Did you want to start looking?”

“Probably not until morning,” Tjelvar says, slowly. He manoeuvres himself around Edward, and pulls the curtain across the rising dusk. “We’ll need the light. Though the dark might be helpful for checking that map again. Do you still have the lens?”

“Of course!” Edward declares, fishing it out of his belt pouch. He holds it up for a moment, gives it a brief shake, and then it bursts into life again, splaying what looks for the first few seconds like constellations across the ceiling. They begin to fall into place, whirling like a dust devil.

Tjelvar settles onto the bed, lies back, to see the complete picture without craning his neck. Edward to flops down beside him, the mattress shifting with his weight, the space between them sloping down. He busies himself pulling out the map they’d given him, holding it up so he can see both at the same time, but the one from the lens is still displaying the full country.

“Can you, ah, make it bigger?” he asks, more to the ceiling than to Edward.

“How would I…?”

The map flickers, for a moment, and then resolves into a shape that has the blinking dot a little larger. Tjelvar holds up his own map, squinting in an effort to compare them. He turns it, and then sighs, sets it down, and mumbles a few short lines of a song, one he vaguely remembers his mother teaching him. It’s enough – an illusion flickers into being, half-transparent, overlaying an exact facsimile of the map he’d been given over the one from the lens. It shimmers, courses through the air in faint bluish lines.

 _Like veins_ , Tjelvar thinks, and feels faintly sick.

“What’s that?” Edward asks – Tjelvar glances sideways at him to find him gazing up, the lights reflected in his eyes. “How long have you been able to do that?” He tips his head sideways, and the wonder in his face eases Tjelvar’s chest.

“I don’t like magic,” Tjelvar says – doesn’t mean to, hasn’t ever really told anyone. “It’s – unreliable. You can cast however many spells in day, or you think you can, until you hit an unexpected antimagic field. When it comes down to it, what you need is training. Skills. Things that aren’t just going to desert you in the wrong circumstances.”

“Hm,” Edward says, looks away, starts to rub at one of those scars again.

Tjelvar turns his attention back to the ceiling, and shifts the illusion, matching the Church of Poseidon to its ancient counterpart. It’s just off what had been the original road through the town in the direction of the coast, probably founded by some of the first sailors to make landfall from Europe. The dot pulses not far from that, though they’re still not close in enough to pinpoint it exactly. It’s something Tjelvar can work with, though.

“Well,” Tjelvar says, more loudly than he has to. “At least we’ve got a smaller area to search. Probably time to get some rest. It’s been a long journey.”

“Right,” Edward says, and immediately starts to sit up. “I’ll take the chair–”

“What?” Tjelvar blinks, shakes his head. “No, there’s plenty of room on the bed for the both of us, you don’t need to put yourself out on my account.” There’s no sense, he reasons, in one of them spending an uncomfortable night, being less able to work come the morning, when they can share without any issue.

“It’s fine,” Edward says. “Really, I mostly slept on the floor in Rome, so the chair is very nice.”

“There really is no sense in it,” Tjelvar says, barely manages to stop short of reaching out to drag him back down. “Edward, I insist.”

“All… all right, then,” Edward manages. “I… do need to change though.”

“Oh.” Tjelvar coughs, rolls a little so that he’s facing away. “Yes. Right. We had better – get on with that. Yes.”

They’ve both turned in, lying in the dark and waiting for sleep, before Tjelvar’s brain quiets itself enough for what Edward had said to actually filter through to the conscious level.

“ _In_ Rome?” he repeats, voice sharp as a whip-crack. “Edward, what in the name of the gods were you doing _in_ Rome?”

“Fighting evil,” Edward says, easy and non-negotiable. “I don’t think I was meant to go in, but there was something evil in there, so I had to go and strike it down, didn’t I?”

Tjelvar wants to prop himself up on his arm, stare at Edward, make sure he’s not been imagining him the whole time. He’s heard and read a lot about what had been left of Rome after the Meritocrats had destroyed it, and he’s fairly certain it had all been hearsay. Very few people walked into Rome and walked out again. The Cult of Mars keeps a close watch on it, to make sure that nothing gets out. _Edward Keystone_ could not have just walked in, and never in all the centuries Tjelvar had studied could he have walked out again. It just can’t be _done_.

And yet, he remembers, briefly, those new scars.

“What was it like?” he finds himself asking, softly. Not something he means, berates himself for the question but can’t take it back. “Sorry, Edward – I’ve just, I’ve spent so many years learning about Rome, knowing I’ll never get to see it. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“It was evil,” Edward says, but he’s not short with it, not snapping. “It was hot and Apollo wasn’t there. No magic, like you said. There were a lot of monsters. There was a place where the air was shimmery and then I was somewhere else.”

“But did you see the…” Tjelvar hesitates, wondering how to explain anything he’s studied to Edward. “Were there any mosaics?”

“I’m sorry, Tjelvar.” Edward lets out a long breath, almost painful. “I didn’t see it like you would’ve.” He sits up, suddenly, reaches over to where he’d left his Apollo book after one last passage before bed. Tjelvar can hear the noise of him flicking through the pages, irregular, as if his hands aren’t steady. “I did pick you up this though – sorry if it’s the wrong sort of thing, I don’t really know…”

Tjelvar holds out a hand, and Edward drops something into it – the shape is irregular, and it sits in his palm, cool and with a familiar, comfortable weight – he’d have been able to recognise a potsherd even without his darkvision.

“You got this for me?” he asks, his voice tightening.

“Yes,” Edward says, solid and certain.

“Why?”

“I thought you might like it.” Edward’s tone starts to waver.

 _Why?_ Tjelvar wants to ask again. Instead, he closes his fingers over the shard, and clears his throat.

“I do,” he says. “That was… very thoughtful, Edward. Thank you.” _Why, why, why?_

“Oh,” Edward says, and his expression, that Tjelvar has been carefully not looking at, falls into a smile that he can’t help but let his eyes be drawn to. “Good. I’d have brought you back a whole one but the professor was sleeping in it.”

Tjelvar clears his throat again, and puts the potsherd down carefully on the bedside table at his end. He’ll examine it properly in the morning, and while he expects it’ll be of limited use without a better idea of its provenance, it’s still more of Rome than he ever thought he’d be able to touch. Is more than that, perhaps.

He’s still not sure, though, what exactly he can have done to be thought of there. He feels Edward settling back down beside him, and the bed abruptly feels far smaller than he thought it was.


	2. Chapter 2

Tjelvar barely sleeps, that night. It’s not that he’s uncomfortable – far from it. His thoughts just keep fizzing around the shape of that potsherd, a problem that he can’t solve, unable to understand _why_.

He wonders, about Rome. About Edward, wandering streets he can’t bring into focus – sometimes, in his head, they’re dragonfire-scorched, walls flowing down in waterfalls of glass towards the cracked ground. Sometimes they’re just a skeleton of a place, the only structures ones that would crumble at a single touch. Sometimes, it’s just a desert, sands stretching out, alone and distant and impossible. In all of them, Edward shouldn’t be there, bleeds and bleeds from a wound left by a monster that Tjelvar tries not to imagine.

From time to time, Edward will give a soft whine, his sleep far from peaceful, and Tjelvar thinks perhaps he’s in the same place himself. He considers waking him, trying to soothe him, but it all ends as quickly as it begins, and Tjelvar is pressed back into his own head. There, Edward stops, pauses, not seeming to hear the screams of damned creatures on the wind, and crouches in the dust of a civilisation that Tjelvar had once dedicated his life to learning about. He lifts something, tilts it so that a faintly glinting mass of sand and ash pours off it catching rainbow colours in the violent light, and then he tucks it away, somewhere safe. A moment, Tjelvar thinks, something that should scarcely be significant, but it _is_. He feels it, and it won’t let him be.

He wonders where he’d been, then. If it had been before or after he had found himself the puppet of something he still can’t name. Whether he’d been sent among the uninfected yet, ready to draw them in. Where, exactly, the Tjelvar Edward had thought of had been, in that year when no one, himself included, had had the mind to do so.

Edward gets up a little before dawn, attempts to cross the room quietly, but trips with a clang over his breastplate, freezes. Tjelvar gives no indication that he’s awake, and Edward starts to move again, more slowly, picking up his clothes and armour. He goes to stand at the window, pulls at the curtain to peer out, studies the latch like he’s wondering how to get it open, and then glances back towards Tjelvar, obviously decides not to risk disturbing him.

Tjelvar closes his eyes, knows that Edward can’t see that detail in the thick dark, and tries not to look at him again – he can hear the hushed noises of him changing, the shuffle of the pages of his book, and then a muted humming that might, Tjelvar supposes, be a soft attempt at a hymn.

He listens, and finds himself starting to drift off for the first time. Welcomes it, the only rest he’s felt in hours from his insistent mind. When he wakes again, Edward is sitting in the chair, Tjelvar’s map of the area spread out over his lap.

“What time is it?” Tjelvar asks, voice gritty.

“Nearly nine,” Edward informs him. “I went down and got some breakfast.” He points towards a tray on the floor next to him, and Tjelvar blinks at it, blearily. Can’t make out what’s supposed to be on it.

“Thank you,” he says, anyway. “We should – probably get going soon, though, don’t want to lose any more of the light.”

Edward nods, and he busies himself at the window again as Tjelvar gets dressed, trails after him when Tjelvar chooses an apple from the tray and starts on his way out of the room. He smooths his fingers over the fruit, a brief and far-off memory of Atlas’ orchard flickering through his head, and bites into it.

They start off down the road towards the Church of Poseidon, and it’s only a minute’s walk before Tjelvar realises that something isn’t right, with a prickling across the back of his neck – there’s a figure, in the road behind them. He first catches sight of it as he glances back, trying to make sure that Edward’s keeping up. There’s another one a few seconds later, slightly nearer. Two men, dressed like the rest of the locals, but they don’t move like them.

They’re being followed. Tjelvar leads Edward up and around a few nonsense side-streets to test it, to make sure that it’s not just his sleepless night getting the better of him, but their shadows stick with them.

“What’s going on?” Edward asks, sidling a little closer to him. “Tjelvar… you do know we’ve been on this road already?”

Tjelvar pauses, then tilts his head back, angling it towards the closest of the men, this one dour-faced, a little too intent on them, paying too much attention. The one further back is likely more experienced, but Tjelvar has the sharp eyes and suspicion of someone who’s been at it far longer.

“We’re being followed,” he tells him. “If you wouldn’t mind going and checking with them if we… left something at the inn, perhaps?”

Edward smiles, nods, and turns to walk with the perfect paladin’s purpose towards the man. His eyes widen and he stops so violently he nearly wavers over. Then he turns, and starts to hurry away in the opposite direction.

“I don’t think he wanted to talk, Tjelvar,” Edward reports, turning back towards Tjevlar.

No, didn’t look like it,” Tjelvar agrees, pausing long enough for Edward to catch up again. He won’t, he decides, tell Edward about the other one. Better to wait and see what they do – perhaps, he thinks, it has something to do with Alfred Grace’s telescope. A paladin of Apollo and an orc archaeologist, after all, aren’t exactly the most difficult people to follow on a train from Kent.

He doesn’t bother trying to lose him either, between there and the area that he’d singled out. He notices Edward bowing his head as they pass the Church of Poseidon, and wonders briefly if he should suggest they look for a shrine to Apollo, too, but as they circle around it, the cramped roads open out into a smaller square, no doubt long surpassed by the one with the town hall. This one is older, old enough to put out Tjelvar’s words before he’s even formed them in his throat.

It’s mostly grey and nondescript, a few well-worn decorations around what might once have been a place set aside for a market. Tjelvar steps out into it, and the stones beneath his boots are polished by centuries of travelling, pulling him towards the centre. There’s a well, sitting there, hunched down against time and the often-violent weather.

“Edward,” he says. “Look.” He leads him over to it, leans over to study the stonework. There have certainly been some attempts to restore it, but not, Tjelvar doesn’t think, in the last century. It doesn’t look like it’s actually been used for water in a very long time, whatever waterway had passed beneath perhaps having changed its course. Tjelvar can tell they’re in the right place without even checking the mark on his map.

“Tjelvar,” Edward says, reaching out a hand, though he’s at the opposite side of the well, with no chance of actually reaching him to grab for his attention. “This one’s a different colour.”

Tjelvar circles around to see that he’s pointing at one of the stones in the edge of the well – it’s a shade lighter than the others, has weathered differently, and there are traces of a different mortar around the edge. Not something that anyone would see with a casual glance, or think anything of if they hadn’t already been guided there.

Pulling the knife from his belt, Tjelvar crouches, and starts to scrape at the edges of it, loosening the stone.

“Should you be doing that?” Edward asks. “You’re not going to… break the well?”

“Not unless it’s very badly constructed.” Tjelvar flashes a grim smile at him over his shoulder, and taps at the stones on either side, bearing the weight of the ones above. “It should be able to do without this one.”

“No,” Tjelvar says, and gestures with the knife to the stones on either side, bearing the weight of the ones above. “Looks like we can get this one out with no trouble.”

Edward nods, and settles against the wall, back to the hole, putting Tjelvar in mind of a teenager, keeping a hunched and brooding watch as a friend carves rude slogans onto a wall. He schools the amusement out of his face, and turns his focus back to his work. Tries to let there be nothing else, until he’s managed to pull the stone out with a scrape of masonry. When he reaches into the gap, his hand finds a leather-wrapped bundle, pulling it out into the light.

“Tjelvar,” Edward says, and it’s shot through with unease.

“I’ll put the stone back in a minute,” Tjelvar reassures him without looking, starting to gently unwrap the bundle – a box falls out into his hand, small, the surface intricate and covered in lettering – he recognises Egyptian heiroglyphics, Greek letters, hieratic, but none of it seems to fall into the configuration it should. The hieroglyphs are at cross-purposes, the birds that should indicate the direction of reading glaring at one another and back-to-back, some of the Greek letters upended, hieratic at angles it never should be.

“I think I’ll take that, if you don’t mind.”

Tjelvar starts, stumbles up into a standing position. He turns, fast, makes sure to hold the box behind his back, close to the place where he could let go of it and drop it down into the well. Hide it, bargain with it, if he has to, ready for whatever he might see.

He’s expecting knives. Swords, even, weapons of any or all kinds drawn on them, ready to force them to give up their prize. It’s the sort of thing he’s used to, on this kind of expedition. On a treasure hunt, rather than an expedition or excavation, he has to be prepared to meet other treasure hunters, a group with wide-ranging morals, some of whom, he’s sure, would have no qualms about killing a paladin.

Instead, the only threat comes from how severely they’re outnumbered – there’s a group of eight, loosely clustered around them, including their two shadows from earlier – and the face of the person standing at their head, holding a relaxed but confident stance, is one he recognises. Older than when he’d last seen it, as he expects his own is to them.

They smile at him, quick and charming, still with nothing to indicate that things are about to get violent.

“Alder, wasn’t it?” he says, cautiously, playing for time, for all that he knows full well. “Alder Grey?”

“The very same,” they confirm. “How have you been, Tjelvar? Still chasing Hannibal?”

“He found him,” Edward reports, voice more spiked than Tjelvar has ever heard it before – at Bertie, he’d been angry, but it hadn’t been like _this_. “He’s amazing.”

Alder glances at him, grins, and looks back to Tjelvar.

“Who’s your friend?” they ask, sticking their hands into the pockets of their coat, leaning in like they’re ready to be told all the gossip. “I didn’t think you were all that interested in the churches – something happen to change your mind?”

“Edward,” Tjelvar says, trying to stop it from coming out so obviously guarded as it does. “This is Alder. Alder, this is Edward.”

“We knew each other at university,” Alder says, inclining their head slightly towards Edward. Like they’re passing on confidential information. 

“First year,” Tjelvar says, quickly, before Alder can decide Edward needs to know anything else about how he had been, back then, admitted on a full scholarship, bright and ready to believe that he could conquer everything by just being the best he could be. “They dropped out.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t,” Alder comments. “After what they used to say about you.”

“What did they say?” Edward frowns, his hand hovering over his morningstar, so unsure of the situation as to be completely lost. “Tjelvar – what’s going on?”

“What’s going on,” Alder says, gesturing towards Tjelvar, or, probably, towards the bundle that he’s still holding behind him. “Is that my old friend Tjelvar has just been very helpful and found us exactly what we were looking for – the trial of wisdom complete, I suppose.”

“What _trial_?” Tjelvar demands, frustration snapping into his tone. “What do you know, Alder?”

“I thought you were here for the treasure?” They raise an eyebrow, the expression on their face to genuine to be a smirk, but a little too close to it for Tjelvar’s liking. “I was sort of looking forward to seeing what you’d learnt, over the years.”

“We’re here for Jacqueline Grace’s telescope,” Edward announces, folding his arms across his chest. “It was stolen.”

“Oh!” Alder reaches deeper into their right pocket, pulls the telescope out, with no discernible shift to the shape of the coat – it seems to fit them well, but the telescope’s as long as their forearm and should have shown. Magic, perhaps. “You can have that, certainly.” They hold it out towards Edward. “Turns out it wasn’t really much use. Can’t see anything with it at _all_.” 

“ _You_ stole that,” Edward says – his frown deepens, and Tjelvar wonders if he’s checking for evil. “That’s – you shouldn’t do that.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Alder says. “But really, I’d hesitate to call it stealing – we were just… borrowing without permission. Which isn’t morally brilliant, I’ll admit, but I expect there treasure is going to be brilliant in all senses.” 

“You’re looking well,” Tjelvar says, firmly, before Edward can try to engage with that.

“You aren’t,” Alder replies, but their tone takes the sting out of it. “I suppose that’s – what did you go into, in the end? Academia?”

“Freelance,” Tjelvar says. “You?”

“Mercenary,” Alder says. “Of a kind. This is what I do – I and my companions were hired to recover Sherden’s treasure.”

Tjelvar blinks, stares for a moment, as his brain tries to fit together puzzle pieces that don’t work. Alder had always been so stringently against profiting from history in the kind of way they’re implying, ransoming knowledge to only those who can afford it. That’s part of why they had got on so well, once.

“Black market?” he says, finally. “I thought better of you–”

“Absolutely not – all above board,” Alder says. “Well, as above board as any of this ever is, you know how it goes. I did have every intention of returning the telescope, once we’d recovered the treasure. Nice to know you’ll be able to do that for me.”

Edward’s eyes are still a little narrowed, but his hand moves away from his morningstar – clearly no evil detected. Tjelvar could have told him that, could have explained what actual evil is like when it turns up in these situations.

“So, what’s this about a trial?” he asks again, a little more firmly. Alder can evade a question all day if he doesn’t keep pressing at it.

“That’s my business,” Alder says, calmly blocking him out without anything resembling anger or regret. Professional, Tjelvar thinks. A far cry from the undergraduate that he’d known, raging against the limitations of the system they’d found themselves in. Maybe they have fewer walls now. “As is that box, actually, if you wouldn’t mind passing it here. Your job ends with the telescope, right?”

“But _Tjelvar_ found that–” Edward starts, but Tjelvar has already brought it out, is holding it towards them. Alder isn’t threatening them – Alder probably wouldn’t. But they want it, they know Tjelvar has it, and they’ll get it, one way or another. There had been very little able to stand in Alder’s way, from what Tjelvar recalls. It was only their own dissatisfaction with the university that had stopped them from burning through it like a sharp, directed burst of dragonfire.

“Thank you,” Alder says. They take it, consider it for a moment, in the light, and then their other hand comes out, knife blade reflecting the clouds overhead. “As much as I would love to consult with you and solve this properly, I’m afraid that I am up against some time constraints.” There’s a crack of wood, before Tjelvar can protest, and the box breaks neatly, across a hinge that Tjelvar hadn’t had time to find. “I’m sure the conservators will be able to sort it.”

“They’d better,” Tjelvar mutters.

“Thanks for your help,” they say, nodding to Tjelvar. “And it really was nice to see you. We’ll have to catch up sometime – I’m _very_ interested to learn what led you to break with that working-alone attitude you used to have. Good to meet you, Edward.” They grin at Tjelvar, fold the box into one of their pockets. “I’ll send you an invitation to the grand opening, shall I?”

“I’ll see you there,” Tjelvar says. “Good luck.”

He watches them go, their people following after them with few suspicious glances back towards Tjelvar. None of them seems to question Alder’s decision, though, and nothing that looks like a weapon goes anywhere near a hand.

“Why did you give it to them?” Edward asks, shuffling nearer to Tjelvar, his voice lowered, almost miserable.

“They gave us the telescope,” Tjelvar says. “I thought it was a fair enough exchange – and I thought that was all you were after? Fulfilled your duty, and all that.”

Edward sighs, glances away, peering over the edge of the well with far more intensity than the few clumped ferns and spirals of moss warrant.

“It was just nice,” he says, words stumbling into each other. “Working with you again.”

“In that case,” Tjelvar says, after a moment of pausing, trying to gauge his face. “Perhaps you’ll be pleased to hear that I have absolutely no intention of giving up the hunt for Sherden’s treasure. There wasn’t much use forcing the issue, and we got the telescope back, but I also got a...” It had only been a brief glance, in the moment after Alder’s knife had dug through the hinge and the box had burst open. “A look at what was inside.” It hadn’t been much, but, Tjelvar thinks, it had been enough – a small coin, carved with a head in profile, wearing a winged helmet. “I think we need to go back to the church hall, and see if they can tell us where the oldest Temple of Hermes is around here.”

* * *

The temple of Hermes is dark and enclosed and ancient, hunched near the edge of a cliff, like it’s about to try and fly off. As they’d been approaching it, Tjelvar had been watching it with the sceptical eye of someone who’s excavated far too many things that had fallen victim to landslips, but, he hopes, it will last another night. It’s clearly been restored, and as they were led through the gates, Tjelvar had almost been ready to insist that he’d made a mistake, that they needed to turn back, but he’d caught a glimpse of a bricked-in doorway, and strengthened his resolve. At its heart, the building is old.

He studies the walls, as they move with the group through towards the main hall, tries to overlay the ancient structure in his mind. It would have been a lot smaller, fewer priests, fewer worshippers, but he’s in little position to judge whether there would have been the same level of decoration.

It’s not often, after all, that he gets to see inside a Hermes temple. He’s a god of trickery, when he needs to be, and as a result his cult is generally far more secretive than the Apollo lot, happy to offer tours and let everyone stand in their sunlight.

The few priests scattered about don’t seem in their element, hardly interacting with their guests, but they’re well-dressed in their official robes. Not used to it, Tjelvar supposes – it’s a feast day, in honour of Hermes’ bringing peace between two serpents in Arcadia, or no one would have been allowed in at all.

Tjelvar feels about as comfortable as the priests do. The other guests are all immaculately turned out, and he, always lacking for something appropriately smart, had found a clean shirt and pulled his hair into something approximating neatness.

At least no one’s looking at him.

What he’s less content with is the fact that they’re all looking at Edward. Tjelvar had managed to talk him out of wearing his armour, insisting that while, yes, it was entirely proper for a paladin of Apollo to attend the events of other churches in official dress, it might raise some difficulties that they don’t necessarily want to be dealing with while they’re trying to find the next clue. He half regrets it now. He’d given Edward a handful of coins and told him to go and find something smart yet nondescript, and to Edward’s credit he had clearly tried, but apparently the tailor had _insisted_ on making one or two quick modifications to the waistcoat he’d found, under the guise of taking it in. What he’d ended up with was at the very least perfectly tailored, though Tjelvar’s in no position to comment on how much resemblance it bears to what Edward had originally picked up.

There’s not really anything he can do about it, because of course Edward would have looked resplendent in anything, but Tjelvar’s thoughts still prickle every time he notices someone else looking him up and down. They can hardly expect to go unnoticed now.

He examines the wall he’s passing a little more closely, and tells himself that once the novelty wears off, then they’ll be able to sneak away and have a proper search through the place. He has no idea what it is that they’re supposed to be looking for, just that it will be old, and that he imagines Alder Grey will be there for it too. He’ll be judging everything else based on his own knowledge, his own wits, part of what makes him him and nothing else.

Their group is shown through into the hall, and Tjelvar makes sure to look around with as much wonder as the others do. It’s interesting, of course – the ceiling, high above them, is beautifully decorated, and there’s stained glass in the walls depicting the Hermes myths in astounding detail, but he can tell that none of it is what he’s looking for.

The paladin who had been guiding them, dressed in silver armour that has enough wings to bring it a little too close to Bertie’s for Tjelvar’s liking, slips back out into the corridor, ready to escort the next crop of guests, and Tjelvar manoeuvres Edward towards a table with nibbles, set up at the far wall. They have to cross a dance floor to get there, and it’s far harder than it should be, especially as people seem to be intentionally setting themselves on an intercept course with Edward.

“Okay,” Tjelvar mutters. “It’s all looking rather recent in here.” He pulls Edward closer in against him, out of the way of an elegantly-dressed greying man, and then darts through the last couple of dancers to lean against the edge of the table. “I… I’ll need to slip out and see if I can find my way around. You... you should probably stay here.” The plan had been to have Edward with him, but one look around tells him that they’re not going to be able to go anywhere alone together without half the room noticing and gossiping about it.

“What do you want me to do?” Edward asks, without really looking at him. His eyes are hazy, focussed of somewhere towards the small group of musicians, who haven’t really moved beyond tuning their instruments yet.

“Just…” Tjelvar hesitates, glances around. There are still people scrutinising them, but none of them look like Alder’s. He looks back to Edward, and them immediately away again. “Keep a look out for anything.”

“Okay,” Edward says, hesitates so completely that Tjelvar could have fit the whole building in the silence. “Tjelvar – is everything all right? You’ve been a bit… odd.”

“All fine,” Tjelvar says, more of an automatic response than anything he’s put any thought into, talking mostly to a tray of drinks being carried past him by a smartly-dressed waiter. “Just, not really my sort of thing.”

“Oh.” Edward chews at his lip, briefly, hands fidgeting at the hem of his waistcoat. “Not mine either. My father used to have a lot of them and I never knew what to do with myself. Whatever I did do always seemed to be wrong.”

“Well...” Tjelvar pauses, searching for something to say but impatient to have already said it. “Don’t tell anyone why we’re here, and don’t get drunk, all right?”

“All right,” Edward says. It had taken some time to convince him of the importance of discretion, but Tjelvar had managed it eventually, been sure to clarify plenty of times that they absolutely were not doing anything wrong, that technically whatever the clue was, it had likely been entrusted to the Church of Hermes with the express intention that they or someone like them would come along and find it again, so it wasn’t even anywhere close to stealing, and Tjelvar had thought he was okay with it, in the end, but he still looks a little more morose than usual.

Tjelvar gives his arm a brief pat, attempts something that he think is close to cheeriness.

“Save me a dance, eh?” he suggests, then turns on his heel and strides away before he can see Edward’s reaction, half cursing himself for commenting.

It’s a lot easier to breathe once he’s out of the main hall. Quieter, there, away from the bustle and the band and the people trying to shout over it, away from all those eyes, turned towards them. He wonders if Edward will actually do any dancing, if he’ll be any good at it. Tjelvar imagines that the sons of nobles are given lessons, but whether or not Edward has been given lessons in something is hardly an indication of his level of skill, and he’s clearly been doing his best to leave behind most of his upbringing.

Not that it matters. No reason why it should. Tjelvar’s focus should be on the walls as he passes them, the ceiling, the floor, as he tries to find and follow the older sections of the temple towards that ancient heart. He goes back to trying to picture it as Sherden’s surviving crew would have known it, thought it somewhere safe for their secrets for the years ahead, trying to drag his attention from where it sticks in the present day as though caught by thorns.

It sticks on Edward, on the _why_ of that potsherd, how he’d smiled when Tjelvar had thanked him for it, on an image of him standing alone and distant by that table, constructed because Tjelvar hadn’t looked back. The time he needs to think of has no Edward in it, is centuries before Apollo would have thought to dream of him. He tells himself that it’s foolish to keep thinking about him – he’s done all he can to make sure Edward doesn’t cause any trouble, and so long as he does what Tjelvar had told him, there’s no chance for him to put the plan in jeopardy.

He almost walks right past a statue in one of the cloisters, actually has to backpedal. Stepping out into the faint, clouded moonlight for a closer look, he realises there was no point – that style of metalwork had been developed far more recently than he needs. The twitch of self-recrimination is sharper than usual, and he strides back indoors faster than he should.

There’s nothing and nothing and nothing – everything he stops to check has something about it that marks it out as too late, and he can feel every second passing as completely as he would a heavy rain on his face. He only has until the end of the feast at most, and the longer it takes, the more likely it is that his absence will be noticed.

He steps through a doorway into another cloister, this one empty save for a pair of gnarled, knotted trees – Tjelvar sighs at them, pinches at the bridge of his nose. Maybe he should circle around in another direction. If Sherden’s crew had left something here, surely it was more likely that it would be in one of the more open areas, not those restricted to the priesthood. He should–

At the other end of the cloister, there’s a movement in the shadows – Tjelvar ducks down immediately, flattening himself in the lee of the short wall. There are voices a moment later, and he presses closer in against the stones, cold against his back, his head nearly cracking into a carved depiction of a winged foot.

“You’re sure?” It’s not a voice Tjelvar recognises, but the accent certainly isn’t local.

“Certain.” Alder, with an easy surety that he remembers well enough. “It’s a test of _guile_. They’re hardly going to leave the prize just lying around somewhere, are they? It has to be an actual challenge.” Their footsteps move closer, soft yet purposeful, and Tjelvar, fast running out of other options to stay hidden, readies himself to cast. “Did you manage to get anything out of the paladin?”

“No.” There’s a sigh in it, an irritated edge. “Not sure if he was intentionally obfuscating or if he’s just that dull–” Tjelvar’s jaw tightens, as light falls around the corner, casting a fall of dim colour across the monochrome of his darkvision. “But I couldn’t even get him to admit he’d come with anyone. Maybe he didn’t and it’s just… god stuff, I don’t know. Last I saw he was just standing at the edge of the dance floor like a lost dog.”

“Tjelvar will be around here somewhere,” Alder says. They’re right on the edge of turning now, one way or the other, to see him or miss him entirely. Tjelvar holds his breath, presses his tongue against the roof of his mouth, ready to murmur something out if their light comes in his direction.

They move away, out of the cloister. Tjelvar exhales softly, waits until he can’t hear them anymore before he stands again. Then he turns and heads in the opposite direction, fast. A test of guile, Alder had said. He hasn’t seen what they have, but from their comments, he thinks he can piece it together – a quest, to test the virtues that Sherden would have wanted the person to inherit his treasure to possess. His repentance is the lens, sensing Edward’s heart. The puzzle box had been for wisdom, and this, apparently, is guile.

Tjelvar has excavated enough temples to make a fair guess at where the reliquary will be. It’ll be defended, kept safe. A heist from something like that is a good way, he thinks, of testing a person’s cunning.

It gets easier the closer he gets – a few times, he has to duck out of the way of paladins, these ones without groups of guests. They move with far more purpose, alert to their surroundings and wary of every sound. Relief shifts, Tjelvar thinks. He keeps a safe distance behind them, and they lead him true and unwavering. He presses into a doorway to avoid the sight of those they’re replacing, and then slips out again, finds himself somewhere to watch from.

There are two of them, standing on either side of a small, heavy-looking door. The wall it’s set into is clearly thick, from the depth of the doorjamb. Easily defended, secure. They aren’t expecting trouble, Tjelvar doesn’t think, just doing their due diligence, but he still has to squash down the wish that he’d brought Edward with him. It wouldn’t have worked out anyway – as sure as he is that he could arrange Edward into a distraction, he probably wouldn’t have liked deceiving or outright fighting other paladins on Tjelvar’s say-so. He’d probably be happier checking the nibbles for evil.

Tjelvar turns away, further into his alcove, and reaches into his pocket, finds a small scrap of fleece. He tries to keep the cast as quiet as possible, concerned that the paladins might hear even more than he is usually self-conscious about it.

A perfect facsimile of Alder Grey is striding past him a moment later, and there’s no prod of a caduceus staff into Tjelvar’s field of vision.

“I’m afraid this area is off-limits,” one of the paladins calls, her voice steady, not aggressive.

The conjured Alder ignores her, and keeps walking on past.

The paladin curses softly, her armour shifting as she shifts on her feet.

“Probably lost,” her companion says. “Go after them, show them back to the hall. I’ll be all right here.”

“You sure?” She sounds warier than Tjelvar is used to from paladins, and he grimaces, wondering why they couldn’t have had to steal from an Apollo temple.

“After that _be more welcoming than last year_ talk from Ada?” The second paladin huffs, her tone all commiserating disapproval. “Don’t really have much choice.”

“I suppose,” the first says. “Right – I’ll be back soon.” She raises her voice, and Tjelvar hears her heading away from the door, trying to catch up with Alder’s phantom. “Excuse me! Excuse me! You’re really not allowed around here.”

Tjelvar wants to give it a minute, give her time to get far enough away, but for all that he thinks he can maintain the illusion a fair distance, if the paladin tries to grab for the false Alder, the deception will be revealed far too soon, and she’ll come rushing back to the door, ready to defend it from an obvious threat.

He leans out of his hiding place far enough to consider the remaining paladin – she’s human, so at least shouldn’t be able to see him so long as he stays out of the circles of light cast by the sconces on the wall. Maybe, he thinks, he could throw something – he doubts she’ll leave her post, but if he can get close enough–

There’s a loud bang, cracking out through the still night air, a flash bright enough to momentarily cast everything into colour for Tjelvar. He sees the paladin turn away from him towards it, squinting in the direction it had come from, and Tjelvar moves.

She doesn’t see him coming, and it’s a clean blow. He crouches beside her for a moment afterwards, making sure that he’s not done any lasting damage, and then he straightens up, pulls out his thieves’ tools, and gets to work on the lock. It’s been a long time, and he’s rustier than he’d like to be – his fingers feel awkward, the muscle memory wound around with blue veins.

He nearly snaps the end off his tension wrench, but he manages to get it open before he hears any footfalls behind him, feels a heavy hand on his shoulder or the press of a staff against his back. After a second to check for any obvious traps, he steps inside, and pulls the door to behind him.

If he had had the time and the permissions, the reliquary is the sort of place where Tjelvar would have wanted to spend hours. It’s only the visitors and labels shy of being a well-stocked museum, and the walls of shelves and plinths are begging him to stop, look, learn.

He has to bypass all of it, skipping past everything that’s immediately and obviously related to Hermes. The edges of the room are a little better – more local things, clustered across the bases of shelves. He purposefully turns down aisles that have clearly been walked less, checks objects that are covered in a thin layer of dust. It all takes far too long, and he’s expecting every instant that he’ll hear the second paladin waking up or the first returning.

There’s another bang from outside, and Tjelvar flinches – he’s not going fast enough, and any second now he’ll either be caught by the church or he’ll be caught up in whatever Alder’s plan is. He gives the reliquary a desperate, sweeping glance, and notices another shelf, shoved into a corner. There’s a book stuffed under one of the legs where it’s slightly too short, and there’s an undisturbed cobweb stretching across it.

Tjelvar scrambles through to it, deciding it’ll be the last place he checks before it’s more important to get himself away from danger.

The bundle is small – he would have missed it completely if it hadn’t been that the cloth it’s wrapped in has some of the same markings as the puzzle box – the hieroglyphics, the Greek letters. He squints at them for a moment, wonders if they might be Sherden’s name, and then pushes that curiosity aside for another time, and pushes the bundle deep into his pocket. There’s no peal of a magical alarm, no trap triggered – perhaps if he had tried to take something from one of the more prominent pedestals, but these items are clearly not in use by the church and deemed less important.

He steps over the paladin again on his way out – takes a second to check her over again, but nothing’s changed. Once her companion gets back, he expects she won’t be left with so much as a headache, and he’ll be out clear, at least in so far as neither of them being able to identify him.

Perhaps, he hopes, no one will even be able to say what he had taken from the reliquary.

By the time he makes it back to the main hall, he’s been able to slow his pace to something far more casual. He turns through and tries not to look across the crowd too obviously – there are a few fewer Hermes priests there had been earlier, robed clerics replaced by armoured paladins, but no other sign that anything had happened, no alarm. Perhaps no one had heard the explosions over the band, who are finding their way through a waltz at slightly the wrong tempo.

Edward is still exactly where Tjelvar had left him, though he’s holding a mostly-full glass of wine now, peering into it as though it can answer his most pressing questions, to the exclusion of a man in front of him, who seems to be trying to make conversation.

Tjelvar wanders back through to his side, settles into place like he’d always been there.

“Edward,” he says, easy and casual, like he’d done nothing of any great consequence. He offers a cool and mostly unmeant smile to the person who’d been attempting to talk to Edward, but they already seem to be slinking away – no one he recognises, but it’s hard to say whether that has any bearing on whether or not they’re a part of Alder’s crew.

“Tjelvar!” Edward brightens instantly, sets his glass down on the table behind him, the wine inside sloshing alarmingly close to spilling over. Tjelvar frowns for a second, unable to think why he might have put it down, and then he remembers, his throat starting to dry up. He’d promised him a dance.

“Ah – about that dance,” he says, uncertainty trying to lace it through with stammering, only combated by the panicked assertion that he can’t look so _suspicious_.

“You don’t have to,” Edward says, slotting his hands against his sides like they’re looking for pockets and not finding any. “It’s fine.”

“I’d like to,” Tjelvar says, though that isn’t strictly true. He’s not much of a dancer, never has been. Can find his way through, a bit, a relic of having attended far too many fundraisers, but is far better at charming potential investors with his words. It just feels necessary – he needs to look like he actually came here to participate in the festivities, and not, in fact, to rob the place. At least there are enough people on the floor that there’s no way, even dancing with Edward, he’ll be the centre of attention.

Edward nods – he holds out one of his hands, and Tjelvar swallows and takes it. Edward’s skin is warm, and for a second he thinks he’s going to feel it intensify into the glow of Apollo’s healing, what he’d felt waking in Hannibal’s tomb in that trap, but there’s nothing to fix this time.

Someone’s shoulder knocks into Edward’s – there’s a muttered apology before Tjelvar can snap something, and then Edward is starting slowly towards the dance floor, and Tjelvar has far more immediate things to worry about.

* * *

It’s a fairly simple map, in the end – it’s rolled up inside box wrapped in the cloth, some effort clearly made to protect it from the crawling decay of time. Tjelvar spends the next morning carefully flattening it out, afraid that it’ll crumble, and comparing it to the rest of the maps that he’d got from the town hall. It takes longer than it should to find the match – he’d slept badly again, and it’s difficult to think through how the landscape might have changed over time when the bed calls him like a siren.

He won’t bow to it, though. Every time he lies down, he’d felt again the movement of dancing with Edward, his brain trying to take him through steps he didn’t really know. Once or twice, he’d stumbled, tripping over his own feet, but Edward had ignored it so completely that Tjelvar had been half-sure he hadn’t really noticed. As far as Tjelvar could tell, he’d been flawless at it, aside from the way that he’d spent most of it watching the ground as it passed below his shoes, head inclined into the careful few inches left between them.

He’d had to get up early, wishing to himself that he’d had more of whatever it was that Edward had been drinking, that had left him sleeping so soundly, and it had still taken the whole morning. The last few hours had passed awkwardly, to Tjelvar’s mind, as he’d sat and scrutinised his maps and been far too aware of Edward as he got up, moved around the room like a guard dog on patrol.

“It looks like we’re heading for a lake,” Tjelvar announces, finally. “It’s north of here, more inland than the temple of Hermes – we should be able to get most of the way on roads, but we’ll probably need to hire some horses.” There had been cabs specifically arranged to take guests to the temple, but Tjelvar doubts there’ll be any sort of public transportation heading out somewhere that remote.

“There’s a stable not far,” Edward says, pausing in front of the window. “I could go.”

“That…” Tjelvar frowns, trying to judge from Edward’s expression whether something’s wrong – this doesn’t strike him as normal – but Edward looks back, meets his eyes, and he immediately glances down again. “That would be helpful.” He stands, busies himself pulling his maps back into a pile. “I’ll pack up what we’ll need and meet you outside.”

Edward nods, and Tjelvar pretends not to notice that his eyes linger on him a little too long before he heads for the door.

He leaves the telescope wrapped up in the extra blanket they’ve provided, tucked neatly out of the way under his bedside table. There’s no point in bringing it and risking it getting lost or damaged when it’s the lens that’s useful. The potsherd from Edward still sits above it, and he watches it a moment longer than he needs to, before he starts to get on with packing again.

When he gets outside, Edward has clearly been there a short while – he’s holding a bridle in each hand, leading two mares, one grey and one chestnut. They look to be fairly even-tempered, the chestnut angling her head towards Edward as he talks to her, more easily than he’s done with Tjelvar all morning. He stops abruptly when he notices Tjelvar, holds out the horse’s reins to him.

“This is Snapdragon,” he informs him. “And Lily.”

“Right,” Tjelvar says. He considers Snapdragon, and she considers him back, then swings her face back towards Edward as though she intends to ask him if he’s quite sure. She lets him mount easily enough, though, and stays still while he settles into the saddle. From his new vantage point, he looks around, searching for any sign of Alder or their people, but there’s no one familiar, no one just ducking out of sight, seen only as an instant of motion.

They’ll be around, Tjelvar thinks. They’d failed at the party, and they must know that, that Tjelvar is the one with the map, and they’d followed them before.

Most of the journey passes in silence – Tjelvar tries to believe it’s just the weather. That once they get high enough, there’s no point in trying to talk, because the wind would just rip away the sounds when they’ve scarcely had time to leave their mouths, and whip them back on them. But there’d been a chance, while they were still in Pinebridge, and neither of them had taken it. Tjelvar doesn’t know what he’d say, that _why_ still rattling dangerously close to the surface, unable to find a way out. Edward’s obviously caught up in his own thoughts, and it’s probably best Tjelvar doesn’t interrupt him.

It stays that way until Tjelvar notices a grey sweep of water in one of the valleys below them. As he watches, the wind catches at the surface and draws a dark swathe of ripples across it, like a cold sort of iridescence.

“There,” Tjelvar says, but it’s snatched away by the breeze. He turns his horse away from the track, starting down, and Edward follows without a word. The landscape passes in a bleak and unimportant haze that Tjelvar can find little space in his mind to be aware of; they make it down to the lakeshore without issue. He pulls Snapdragon to a stop before her hooves can splash into the shallows, and assesses the place.

It’s not the kind of area where it’s easy to hide something. The weather’s too harsh for trees to get very far, so the water rises into tough, mossy turf and then up towards the peaks of the mountains. There are clumps of heather and gorse, but they stay low to the ground, and nothing seems to move through them, just like the lake’s surface is undisturbed by fowl or fishermen.

“We should probably do a circuit,” Tjelvar decides. “You head around that way, and call me over if you see anything that looks manmade, all right?” He gestures to indicate right, and Edward nods.

“Right,” he says, goes to direct Lily, and then pauses, staring out across the water, the cold of it reflected wrong in his eyes. “Are you okay, Tjelvar? You still seem…”

“Quite all right, Eddie,” Tjelvar assures him, speaking more loudly to account for the way he’s starting to turn in the opposite direction. 

“You know if you’re ill or anything I can help.”

“There’s no need,” Tjelvar repeats, means to make it harsher, more insistent, but if the tone was ever there, it’s lost in another ripple of breeze. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Edward says, hesitates again. “It’s… it’s nearly done, isn’t it?”

“The hunt?” Tjelvar’s frown pushes itself a little deeper into his forehead. “It might be. Or we might find yet another clue. But I’m sure we’ll have you back to your church in no time.”

He pushes Snapdragon on, rather than continue the conversation, and Edward doesn’t follow him. The solitude of his own circuit is welcome, he decides. An opportunity to let the wilderness find its way into his head. This is how he should be, out and searching, not sitting around in cafés or trying to blend in at parties. He’s already feeling far more himself than he had done before Edward had called him to Kent. Maybe, if he can keep at it, he’ll finally be rid of those blue-tinted thoughts.

Checking on Edward’s progress, he glances across to the other side – Edward is a glint of gold in his armour, like a stray beam of sunlight on the opposite bank, lost and far from where he’s supposed to be under a sky thick with cloud.

Tjelvar watches him longer than he means to, and Snapdragon veers abruptly sideways, snatching at a clump of grass. He’s about to pull her back towards the shore, but her hooves impact something stone.

She seems slightly bemused by the speed of his dismount, but isn’t bothered enough by it to let it divert her from her meal. Tjelvar scrutinises the grass for a long moment, and can see why it attracted her – it’s different from the surrounding vegetation, a little more verdant.

He reaches into his bag and pulls out his any-tool, pulling at the hinges until he’s formed it into a shovel, and starts to scrape away the scrub and earth.

The stone he finds beneath has clearly been worked. He straightens up, waves his arms in an effort to attract Edward’s attention. Edward notices a little too quickly, and turns Lily to circle around again to meet him.

In the time it takes him to get there, Tjelvar manages to clear most of the undergrowth, cutting it away with his knife where the spade wasn’t sufficient, to reveal a small hatch, closed with a rusted metal ring. He gives it a pull, but it refuses to budge.

“You think this is it?” Edward asks, as he pulls Lily to a stop and climbs down. “Hannibal’s tomb was… bigger.”

“If this thing was on the scale of Hannibal’s tomb, it would have been found centuries ago,” Tjelvar says. “And this has to be it – unless you saw anything on your side?”

Edward shakes his head, and leans down to help him with the ring. It lifts a lot easier with him helping, the sections of stone scraping away from one another, until it reveals a row of narrow steps, descending into darkness. Tjelvar sets his bag down again, sliding the any-tool back into it and pulling out his ioun torch. It floats obligingly into the air around him, ready to light the way.

“And if this isn’t it,” Tjelvar adds, stepping towards the edge. “We can always climb back out again.”

“I should go first,” Edward protests – he reaches out a hand towards Tjelvar, and then just lets it hang there, halfway over the distance.

“You don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“I’m wearing armour.”

“You are,” Tjelvar agrees. “Armour which is going to make it harder for you to dodge out of the way if you set anything off.” He pushes ahead again, starts to descend the stairs before Edward can make any other protest. “Besides, I’m the one with the light.”

Edward follows after him a little too closely, to the point that Tjelvar has to lean to avoid getting hit in the face. The steps are stable enough, cut from the rock around them, but they aren’t wide enough for the length of Tjelvar’s boots, and they’re slick with algae in places. More than once, he nearly slips, but manages to keep his footing.

At the bottom, the ioun torch illuminates a small cavern, the same damp-washed rock as the rest of the excavation, aside for a small door, set into the opposite wall. It’s largely featureless, save for a large, dark handle that he thinks might be metal of some kind.

Edward reaches for it, and Tjelvar bats his arm down.

“Let me look first,” he snaps, moving to study it. The light moves down with him, and finds him nothing obvious – no signs of a mechanism or hints at a hidden tripwire. He’s still cautious, when he pulls at the handle. The door’s heavy, refuses to budge at his pull, but Edward reaches over to help, and it starts to move. He smells, very faintly, of roses, and Tjelvar swallows a laugh at the absurdity of it.

The passage beyond is rough-hewn but seems stable, and he moves into it, much of his vision now monochrome. It must be getting difficult for Edward to see, even with the torch, but he doesn’t seem to be worried about it, just steps after Tjelvar, and winces as the door swings shut behind him with a thud that’s thunder-loud in the confined space.

“Should it have done that?” he asks, leaning closer to do so, like he thinks he’s going to be overheard.

“It was heavy,” Tjelvar reminds him, but he doesn’t feel any reassurance that might have been in it himself, can only hear wariness. It’s not unreasonable, he decides. If the tunnel collapsed and the lake burst in, it would probably need to be that heavy, to keep the water at bay as much as possible.

He walks on, the passage continuing without turning or wavering. It’s as unremarkable as everything else had been, undecorated, just damp rock walls and a thick odour of wet.

Another door comes into view, but this one glimmers dully in the torch’s light, and seems to have been spilled over with brighter patches, forming abstract shapes across it like a fall of mercury. Glass, he realises, as he gets closer, more of it clustered in a depression in the centre, small and circular.

“Edward,” Tjelvar says, reaching out to gauge its size with his fingers. “Do you still have that lens?”

There’s a pause from behind him, and then he can hear Edward starting to pat down his armour, plate and mail clinking. Tjelvar waits, and waits, and nothing comes.

“It’s not here anymore,” Edward manages, eventually, the words hushed and unhappy. “It was in my belt pouch and now it isn’t.”

Tjelvar glances around at him, ready with a sharp retort on his tongue, but it doesn’t come out. It should – his first response should be to assume that Edward hadn’t taken enough care, that he’d dropped it somewhere, but instead he remembers the celebration at the Hermes temple, Edward wearing his belt with the pouch, taking him onto the dance floor. Someone walking into him, in the other direction.

He swears, softly, but it isn’t directed at Edward.

“Alder’s people must have taken it,” he says, ushering Edward back in the direction they had come in. “We’ll have to go, find them, get it back – maybe they’ll be willing to trade for the map.” He and Edward would still have a head start, he thinks, just from already knowing where on the lakeshore to find the hatch. Not as much of a head start as they already had, but if it’s all they can have, it’s all they can have.

“I’m sorry, Tjelvar,” Edward says, flatter than Tjelvar’s heard him in days. “If I’d been paying more attention–”

“There’s no need to apologise,” Tjelvar assures him, but it feels stiff, difficult, too tempered by his own disappointment. “I’m sure their people are very good at what they do.”

“I let you down, though.” Edward rubs a hand across his forehead, like he’s got enough blame stored away behind there already. “I’m sorry.”

“In that case,” Tjelvar says. “I should apologise for giving Alder the puzzle box. This isn’t any different.”

“No.” Edward shakes his head, more vehemently than Tjelvar had expected. “No, that’s not the same, you did it on purpose.”

“There are some who would say that’s worse.”

“Well, they wouldn’t be right, because you’re really smart and know what you’re doing, and–” 

“Ah,” Tjelvar interrupts, gesturing into the tunnel ahead and quickening his pace, pushing past Edward. “The door – help me with it?”

Edward obliges, adding his weight to Tjelvar’s shove, but the door stays fixed firmly in place. Tjelvar gives it another go, putting his shoulder into it this time, but there’s still nothing.

“I think it’s locked,” Edward informs him, leaning back away from it.

“It doesn’t _have_ a lock,” Tjelvar retorts. He swings his rucksack off, barely missing Edward with the arc of it, and crouches, starting to rummage through it for his any-tool. The torch floats down to his level, and the light from it catches briefly on a faint drift of violet through the air, close to the floor of the tunnel.

“Well, it’s not coming,” Edward says, giving it another demonstrative push.

Tjelvar risks a cautious sniff, and something curls into his nose so acrid that he coughs, hard enough that he feels it all the way down into his lungs.

“It’ll have to,” he manages, between breaths. “This is a trap.” From this angle, the gas looks more green, billowing faintly, though he can’t see any spouts in the wall that it could be coming from. He starts to pull his scarf up to cover his nose and mouth, but has to stop, steady himself against the wall. His head is already spinning.

Edward goes to try the door again in earnest, and his outline flares and pulses in Tjelvar’s vision. He just needs a moment, he decides. Then, he can help Edward, they’ll find a way to get out, they’ll find Alder and get the lens back and they’ll be all right.

His legs go out from under him. He tries to brace for the impact, knows it’ll hurt when he hits the floor, but he’s all out of awareness before he reaches it.


	3. Chapter 3

He comes to standing on an unfamiliar street. It’s not a place he ever wants to know – the sky is mottled with a bruising so deep Tjelvar would expect to find it over a broken bone, the wind snarling and spitting overhead with a violence he’d never have thought possible, and underfoot the cobbles are laced between with a glimmering darkness that it takes him a moment to recognise as glass.

There’s an animal instinct thrumming in his head that wants him to make himself as small as possible, flatten himself against the ground and if he must move, crawl until he finds shelter. This is nothing he can outrun, nothing he can fight.

Tjelvar walks on, just as he always has.

The city is a long-dead carcass, though the hunters and scavengers still circle – he can hear them, far-off and hungry. Sometimes, he thinks he can see hazy shadows across the dust that is all that remains of walls, but the wind pulls them away before he can get to them.

He finds Edward in the decayed heart of the place, slumped at the edge of what still resembles a fountain, though what spills from the scorched, jagged rock isn’t water, and tarnishes Edward’s torn armour where it falls against it.

“Tjelvar,” he says. Smiles, too bright to belong in that place, goes to drag himself up, but his legs give out. “I’m glad you’re here. I know you wanted to see it.”

There’s blood on his face, some dried, some not. More is trickling sluggishly from a cut on his throat, deeper and longer than the line that Tjelvar knows as a scar, and has already stained his shirt beyond repair. One of his eyes is blackened, raw and painful. He makes no effort to heal it; there’s no sun in the sky to give him its light. This place has him now.

_We need to go_ , Tjelvar tries to say, but when he opens his mouth, his tongue forms different words.

“Show me.”

Edward struggles up, clutches at the edge of the fountain to do so, his skin blistering where the not-water sticks to it. He staggers, then pushes himself right again. Tjelvar doesn’t help him.

“This is where I die,” Edward says, tries to gesture with a shaking hand, but more blood drips out from underneath his sleeve. “You don’t ever know. That’s all right, though, you wouldn’t care. And that’s fine. People don’t.”

_It’s not all right_ , Tjelvar wants to tell him, but his throat won’t work. He tries until he can feel a phantom pain through his vertebrae, but he stays still and silent. _I should have been better, I needed Sir Bertrand but I didn’t need to–_

“It’ll be soon,” Edward says, too matter-of-fact, too accepting. “If you want to see all the hills we should probably hurry.”

_I don’t_ , Tjelvar can’t say, and the tears won’t well into his eyes. _I don’t_.

Edward holds out a hand, and the one that Tjelvar takes it with is laced through with a shimmering web of blue.

“Tjelvar!” The cry is sharp, desperate. Tjelvar doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see, but whatever his body belongs to now, it won’t let him close his eyes. “Tjelvar!”

There’s a hard impact against his face, and he flinches awake – the sting’s pushed away almost instantly by a rush of healing warmth. The first face he sees is Edward’s, off to the side. His eyes are wide and worried, and both his hands are wrapped around one of Tjelvar’s – he thinks, for a moment, that he can still see the residual healing glow, a faint golden glimmering against his skin. Then he blinks, and it’s gone.

“Welcome back, Tjelvar.”

Alder Grey is crouched over him too, their hand still raised, ready to slap again.

“Alder,” Tjelvar says, testing out his voice. It’s rough, like all the screaming that had been stolen from him in the nightmare had taken its toll anyway. “What… what are you doing here?”

“I’m here for the treasure.” They straighten up, offer him that easy smile, though it’s a little more worn around the edges than he remembers. “You’re welcome, by the way. Not sure how much longer your paladin–”

“ _Edward_.”

“–your _Edward_ , would have held out against the poison.” They turn away, walk out of his field of vision, and Tjelvar grabs onto Edward’s arm, tries to use it to pull himself up the rest of the way, so he can keep them in sight. Edward takes most of his weight, keeps a tight hold on him, as though he’s expecting him to fall again.

“What now, then?” he demands, stronger and steadier than he feels. He’s getting better already, though, Apollo’s healing still coursing through him.

“Well,” Alder says, throwing the words back over their shoulder as they head towards the far end of the corridor. “We both have something the other needs – I have the lens, you have someone who can use it. We’re both very competent at what we do. I propose that we make our way through this place together. Otherwise, neither of us gets any further, and I know that state of affairs is as unacceptable to me as it is to you.”

“And the treasure?” Tjelvar risks a step away from Edward, and finds his legs holding. “What do we do when we get to it? Split it? See who can draw weapons fastest?”

“We can cross that bridge when we come to it.” The look Alder gives him is enough for Tjelvar to assume that not only do they already have an idea of a way across the bridge, they’ve got some thoughts on the landscape following it. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Tjelvar says, though he takes his time over the word. He’ll keep an eye, he decides. Be ready for whatever Alder decides to do, so that he can counter it.

“Great!” Ahead, Alder reaches the door, studies it in the brief, cursory way of someone who had already taken a look, then reaches into their pocket, and holds out something towards Edward. “You’ll need that.”

Edward looks to Tjelvar, waits for his nod before he takes the lens back. It glimmers in his palm under the light of the ioun torch, and he moves after Alder at Tjelvar’s gesture.

Tjelvar glances around, notes the knot of Alder’s people, standing clustered at the far side, as though they’d been told to stand well back and let the professionals get on with it. He recognises most of them, from the celebration at the church of Hermes, from the fountain. They’re likely from a variety of backgrounds, skilled in different areas, a chocolate box of professionals, rather than the uniform assortment of thugs that Tjelvar is used to encountering in situations like this. None of them meet his eye, and he wonders, absently, if they’ve been explicitly told not to.

“What do you have?” Tjelvar asks, turning his attention back to Alder. “I know you have information on this that I don’t. What is it? If you’re expecting me to work with you, I need to have access to everything you do.”

Alder pauses, steps in towards him and waves a couple of their people past like they think Edward needs supervision. Maybe he does, but Tjelvar still feels a prickle of resentment at the idea.

“As I imagine you’re aware,” they say, leaning in a little more closely, like they’re not ready to admit to a failing where their employees can hear them. “We didn’t get the lens from the telescope. All we found in there was…” They take a moment, rummaging about in first one of their pockets, and then its mirror on the opposite side of their coat. “This.” They place a small, tightly rolled scrap of paper in his palm.

Tjelvar unwraps it as carefully as he can, watches his hands for any trace of a tremor as he does so – it’s gone now, but when he lets his mind get too close to it, he can still feel the edges of that nightmare, cowering in his bones.

He recognises Alfred Grace’s handwriting immediately – it’s two sentences, hesitantly transcribed and with enough of it crossed out that Tjelvar can recognise an effort at translation. Perhaps something that had always been with the lens, and he’d decided to copy it out when he’d had the telescope made.

_You who wish to claim the inheritance of Sherden_ , it reads. _Take heart, and prove yourselves in the trails of wisdom, guile, and persistence_.

“Not the most eloquent or cryptic,” Alder says. “But I suppose they weren’t poets.”

“Persistence?” Tjelvar asks. He glances after Edward, who has reached the door and is standing in front of it, holding the lens out, his posture as unsettled as it had been at the party. Time to catch up, he decides, and steps away, leaving Alder to keep pace.

“I assume that that’s this,” Alder says. “Nothing like a dungeon full of traps and dangers to test tenacity, is there?”

“I suppose not.” Tjelvar clears his throat, pushes his way past a couple of Alder’s crew to move to Edward’s side. “Are you all right?”

“Just trying to make it work,” Edward says, gruffly. He’s pressing the lens against the depression in the door, and though he doesn’t turn to look at Tjelvar, he can still make out lines on Edward’s face that shouldn’t be there, his expression drawn.

“Hm.” Tjelvar studies the situation, sees more than he’d like, and none of it what he meant to. He reaches out, hesitates with his hand hovering an inch over Edward’s. “May I?”

Edward nods, starts to shift away as though trying to give Tjelvar room – Tjelvar stops him with a light touch at his wrist, then settles his fingers against Edward’s, gently turning the lens in the depression. The lights start, a muted glow against Edward’s skin, amber then violet, and the glass sections of the door catch it, throw it in strange patterns across the walls.

There’s a faint click, and the door slides inwards. At a cautious push from Edward, it swings the rest of the way open, the illumination from the ioun torch falling away into darkness beyond.

Tjelvar doesn’t let go, instead gently guiding Edward aside, letting Alder’s team file past.

“I asked if you were all right,” he says. “You – didn’t really answer.”

Edward slides the lens away into his belt pouch, and gives the action far more of his attention than it deserves, winds the tie around his knuckles like it’s the answer to some puzzle that Tjelvar’s not been told about.

“Alder Grey said you’d be having bad dreams,” he mumbles. “That when you woke up you… might not be right. You. Are you?”

“I’m fine, Edward,” Tjelvar says, too loudly. He tucks a reminder into the back of his mind not to ask about what that gas had actually been, is sure that he doesn’t want to delve into all of the possibilities encompassed by _not right_ or _not him_. Maybe he would have wanted to _know_ , once, but then something had reached into his head and moved him without his permission, and that curiosity shrinks away from more than just the jagged images of the nightmare. “Nothing I’ve not been through before. We should keep moving. Wouldn’t want Alder to leave us behind.”

Edward finally risks a glance at him, and the concern in his face cuts. It’s unearnt.

Tjelvar pivots around, and carries on through into the next room. He’s aware of Edward following after him, can pick out the sound of his footsteps from the others, prickling over his thoughts. He forces his attention away, tries to bury it in studying their new environment, but there’s nothing there to properly distract him.

It’s larger than the corridor that they had come from, still hewn from rock, nondescript and suffused with a dank smell that sticks itself to back of Tjelvar’s throat. Mostly empty, and especially so in the sense that their way is barred by a long chasm that stretches from end to end, the walls smoother there as if to deliberately prevent anyone from climbing across like that. It’s dark, darker than Tjelvar’s night vision can reach, but somewhere down there, he can hear water running. The door on the other side could have been a factory-match for the last one, right down to the same kind of depression lock.

There’s no obvious way over to it – no perilous ladder or even the stubs where one might once have been. Given more time and less potentially volatile company, perhaps he would have examined the edges for evidence of how they had managed the ancient construction, but for now he leaves it at an almost-cursory glance around, checking for irregularities or puzzles to solve, that find nothing.

“Edward,” he says, without turning his head. “Take your armour off.”

“Tjelvar?”

Tjelvar gestures to the drop, the dark and certain death that would come with impact below. “It’s heavy and awkward. I would prefer if you didn’t fall.”

“Right, okay.” Edward busies himself with one of the straps, and Tjelvar heads away towards Alder, rather than give the impulse to reach out and help him with them enough of a response to even call it acknowledged.

They’re walking up and down the edge, far closer and with far less care than Tjelvar would have advised, in case of loose stones, but they seem unbothered by it, even when he stops a metre shier of the chasm than they have.

“There’ll be a solution,” they say, and he can almost hear the wheels turning in it as they work at the problem. “They want _someone_ to get to the treasure, so every one of these traps will have a way through it.”

“I have rope,” Tjelvar says.

“We all have rope.” Alder gestures to illustrate the point, the movement tight and frustrated. “What were you thinking of tying it to?”

“I also have grappling arrows.” Tjelvar points, and they at least follow it. “They’ve done far less work making sure the ground on the other side is smooth than they did on the walls. I should be able to get purchase, and you can leave a couple of your people here to hold the rope at this end. I’d suggest Edward, but…”

“But we need him to open the doors,” Alder finishes. “How convenient for you.”

Tjelvar gives a bland, unfelt smile. “It’s hardly my fault you didn’t think to bring a paladin.”

“Fine,” they snap out, their eyes narrowing. “We’ll try it. But you’d better get it right. Edward will be crossing first.”

“No,” Tjelvar says, keeps it even, trying to remind himself that he’s not seen Alder for years, that it’s not _that_ unreasonable of them to be careful, to make sure that he’s not going to pitch their people into the abyss to make it an easier fight when it comes to it. It’s not as if he’s not had similar things happen to him in his career. “I’ll go. Like you said, Edward opens the doors. You need him more than you need me. You’ve got plenty of expertise of your own.”

Alder raises an eyebrow, but says nothing in response to that. Tjelvar takes it as permission, sweeps his bow from his back, and starts to line up the shot. They make a low noise in their throat, and stalk back towards their people, leaving his field of vision.

“Tjelvar?”

Edward. It’s so easy to shoot him a glance. He looks abruptly too small without his armour on, left in a gleaming pile by the door.

“We’re going to climb over it,” Tjelvar tells him. He pulls an arrow from his quiver and nocks it, straightens his back and tries to blink the last of the nightmare from his eyes. The curves of the grappling hook shake, a tremor coursing up his arms. He holds his breath, but something in his head just starts to rush.

“Do you need me to do anything?” Edward asks, and there’s a momentary touch against Tjelvar’s arm, a pulse of warmth. The arrow fires, flies true, and catches against the rocks that litter the uneven ground on the other side with a scraping sound he can feel in his bones.

Tjelvar coughs, and gives the line a firm tug. It stays lodged. Another test, same result. He feels he should do more. If it had just been him, he’d already be halfway across, but this line is supposed to take Alder’s life, the lives of their people. Edward’s life. But there aren’t really any other ways to check it, and someone takes the end of the rope from him.

“Ready to go?” Alder prompts him, as their employees back towards the door again, bracing muscles that put Edward’s to shame. It effectively removes the most physically imposing of their group, Tjelvar notes, and hopes he can take it as an indication that Alder is not intending for their situation to end in bloodshed.

Tjelvar secures his bag a little more firmly, stows his bow, checks that his pockets are closed. It’s a flurry of movement that heats his skin like bluster, and he takes a second to still himself, before he reaches for the rope again.

“Tjelvar?” Edward’s frowning, glancing from the grappling arrow to Alder’s strongest and back again like he doesn’t trust either of them.

“I’ll be fine,” Tjelvar assures him, steps forward as the rope is pulled taut the rest of the way. He adjusts his grip, then pulls himself up and hooks his legs around it, dangling underneath. His pack scuffs against the rock floor below, and beyond that he can just about pick out a faint prayer, Apollo’s name. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

He inches out over the void, and does his best not to feel the utter, yawning absence of anything below him. The line burns at his hands, sweat starting to slicken his grip, but despite the ragged whistling of his own breath through his chest, he keeps his hold.

It seems to take years, a painful silence from the others only feeding the idea that with each swing, the hook will come unstuck, and he’ll be left scrabbling for his magic before he can fall, catch his hands on the barbs and hang by them if he’s lucky. He’s almost come to believe that the other side isn’t real when the top of his quiver stubs into something, a jolt so abrupt that his fingers slip. He hangs there a few moments longer, then swings up and around, risks reaching for the edge of the floor.

He hauls himself out onto it like a fish dragged from water, lies there for as long as he can stand to, and then staggers up towards where the arrow had caught, ready to grab hold of it if it comes loose.

By the time he can lift his head again, Alder is already halfway over, making short work of it, and Edward is getting ready back on firm ground, slotting the lens into his belt pouch, securing it, checking it’s secured, checking again. Between each movement, he glances towards Tjelvar.

“Good shot,” Alder says, as they clamber up to join him, moving like none of it was any effort at all, offering a breezy smile under eyes as sharp and watchful as they always had been.

He doesn’t respond, too busy watching Edward, something in the back of his mind struggling to scrape his own prayer to Apollo. Edward rubs his hands together briefly, then swings out, and all potential for words in Tjelvar’s head ceases. Edward climbs, and Tjelvar can’t tell if he’s doing it slowly or if it’s just his perception. There’s no fear in his face, but the image of him in that imagined Rome keeps sneaking in at the edge of Tjelvar’s mind, broken and afraid and dedicating all the time he had left to some phantom blue-veined _Tjelvar_.

It isn’t until he hears Edward’s boots hitting the ground that he realises he’s standing almost at the edge of the drop, ready to grab for him if he slips – he doesn’t, just scrambles up and gives Tjelvar a bright grin. There’s a want, urgent in Tjelvar’s throat, to touch him anyway, just to make _sure_ , but Edward passes him, walking towards the door and fumbling at his belt pouch for the lens again.

Tjelvar clears his throat, and goes back to wait at the grappling arrow, while those of Alder’s group who are accompanying them further cross the chasm. They linger nearby too, like it’s occurred to them that he could probably dislodge it and send their people plummeting down, but he makes no move to touch it, and their hands stay away from their weapons.

Once they’re all over, he turns to check if Edward needs help with the door again, only to see that he’s already got it open and is waiting there, his gaze skating away from Tjelvar’s as if an attempt not to be caught staring.

Tjelvar stifles a cough and steps up to peer into the darkness. The room beyond seems plain, but as he studies the space, his darkvision resolving, his attention catches on a patch of floor that looks different from the others – raised slightly. Pressure plate, he notes, and gestures for Edward to stay close.

“Parts of the floor in there aren’t safe to walk on,” he says. He moves cautiously forwards, then stops, holds out a hand. “Edward, could I borrow your morningstar?”

He curses the question the instant it’s out of his mouth. The morningstar is Edward’s holy weapon, entrusted to him by his church and his god. It’s not a spade or a hip flask and he shouldn’t ask for it to be shared like one. He goes to take his hand back, but before he can even catch his mind up with his mouth enough to rattle out an apology, the handle is being pressed into his palm like Edward hadn’t even had to think about it.

A quick prod of the ground that he’d decided was safe to step on proves him right, and he starts to make his way forward again, only for Alder to grab at his arm and pull him back, the bright flare of their torch throwing the room into stark new shadows that sweep about it, effectively obscuring the trap sensors from Tjelvar’s view.

“Get that light back,” Tjelvar snaps. “I can see where we need to walk better without it.”

“Wait,” Alder retorts, their voice sharp as his. “Edward has to go first.”

“No.” Tjelvar cranes around, trying to shift his perspective, let himself see again, but it’s still too bright. “I’ve had enough of your little _tests_ –”

“Is there room on the other side of the traps for more than one person to stand?” Alder demands, dipping the torch closer to his face, making him lean back. “He’s the only one who can open that door. He needs to go over there and get it open before the rest of us can cross. Agreed?”

Tjelvar glowers. They meet it levelly, and he can see in their face they aren’t going to shift on this. He lets his shoulders slump, steps back.

“You still need to move that light,” he says. “Or I won’t be able to tell you where to walk.”

Alder sighs, and passes the torch back to one of their employees. Tjelvar casts a narrow-eyed glance towards the opposite door, but they’re right – there’s not much space in front of it, an irregular patch of ground cutting it off. It’s comfortable for one person, could maybe manage two, but if one of them so much as leant wrong it could set off the trap.

“Right,” he says, as his vision acclimatises to the gloom again. “Eddie – I need you to step exactly where I tell you, and nowhere else. Don’t put your foot down until I tell you to. Understand?”

“Yeah.” Edward gives him a wide, confident smile that compresses something in Tjelvar’s throat, and starts to move inside, stopping with one boot raised over the threshold.

“Little to the left,” Tjelvar says, craning for a moment. It doesn’t seem to be a chequerboard style, no repeating pattern that can be trusted. The sizes of the pressure-sensitive areas are irregular in size and placement, some almost covering the whole width of the room, while others only extend a few inches from the wall. “Good.”

Edward puts his weight down, and nothing happens.

“Well done,” Tjelvar tells him, trying to keep his tone steady and calm, like he hadn’t had any doubts about it. “Next I need you to move towards the left side of the room. Go slowly, and nothing until I tell you.”

Edward does as he’s told, in silence. Tjelvar studies his every move, wary for something that could set the trap off, and marvels at the lack of a shake in his limbs. His own hands have gone tight around the grip of Edward’s morningstar, clutching it like his grip is the only thing keeping arrows inside the walls. The pitch of his voice shifts in ways he doesn’t like, but Edward still follows his instructions to the letter, even once he’s within reach of the door.

It opens like the others, a glow against Edward’s fingers and then the noise of old hinges. It’s dark beyond, but Tjelvar’s sight is still good enough to just about make out something inside that reflects the light from their torches. His heartbeat starts to pick up even further, in the expectation of their goal.

“Don’t go far,” he calls to Edward, but Alder is already striding into the room, ready to make their own way across. They barely need his corrections, were clearly paying close attention to where Edward was walking. Always astute, Tjelvar remembers, but can’t help the souring knowledge that they’re probably still wary that he might decide to steer them into a trap.

He hurries through guiding the rest of Alder’s group – he’s not careless, wouldn’t be careless, but with each repetition, they find the path easier to follow from memory. All of them seem to have that same spark about them that he feels, an excitement that hovers around his head, of discoveries about to be made.

They filter into the room beyond with their torches, and Tjelvar gets a brief impression of more corridors, striking out from it like the spokes of a wheel from its axle, and the glimmer of gold at the centre, before he turns his attention back to the floor for the last time, to get himself through.

Alder waits for him at the door, ushering Edward further inside to make room for them. He assumes they’re doing what they can to mimic his actions as he’d helped the rest of them through, but as he approaches the centre of the space, a movement from their hands catches his attention.

Tjelvar meets their eyes in time to see them offer a smile that goes nowhere near.

“Best of luck, Tjelvar,” they say. And then they toss out what looks like a pebble, which falls with a soft thud onto one of the pressure plates.

Tjelvar shouts, but it’s too late – there’s a snap of shifting stone, a grind of forgotten gears, and a new wall falls down across the door so fast and so hard that he’s surprised it doesn’t crack. He’s wheels around, but a corresponding slab has covered the other side, too – he’s sealed in.

He freezes for a second, waiting for something more horrible to happen – for gas, for the walls to start crushing in on him, for snakes to come pouring out of the ceiling. His muscles are wound so tight that it feels like they might snap, but there’s nothing. There keeps being nothing.

Nothing, of course, that would kill him in its own way, eventually.

Alder must have seen it, when he’d been focussing so hard on trying to get everyone across safely. All that time he’d spent noticing their suspicions and not having enough of his own. He curses, anger flashing like flame in a pan.

“Edward!” he yells, fist thudding into the slab between them, but all that he gets for his trouble is a smarting hand. He steps back, forces himself to breathe more slowly.

Every trap, he reminds himself, has a way out. Especially pressure plates – it’s far too easy for tomb builders to slip or overbalance and fall onto them. Arrows would never be loaded until the last of the construction crew have left, everyone involved would carry antidotes to poison, and there will be a way to release the slabs.

He just has to search, and hope that whatever will free him isn’t on Alder’s side of the door, that the main failsafe hadn’t just been to always have someone on the other side.

Each circuit of the chamber seems even more useless than the last – there’s nothing on the walls, no convenient patch with a different texture that might indicate access to the mechanisms, no response from the pressure plates, the ceiling just another curving plane of impassive stone.

Halfway through his fourth search, Tjelvar stops, spins on his heel, and smashes Edward’s morningstar into the slab as hard as he can. The impact is hard, and he’s peppered by shards of stone, sharp and quick as hail. His second strike is aimed better, at the base of it, but doesn’t go as deep. Tjelvar hefts the morningstar again, panting, and goes in for a third time.

It’s hard, single-minded work, but Edward’s morningstar doesn’t rust, doesn’t break, held together, intact and gleaming, by Apollo’s magic. He loses track of time and the screaming of his muscles as he strikes it again and again.

Eventually, the handle slips from his grip, and he staggers back before the end can crush his foot, panting. He dashes blood and sweat from his brow, then drops to his knees to poke at the impression he’s made. It doesn’t go all the way through – not even close, from what he can tell, though there’s no indication of how thick the slab might be – but it’s deep enough for his purposes.

He scrabbles his pack around and off, and fumbles it open – grabs for his any-tool and a stone he uses as a paperweight, and sets them down in front of the door. Forcing the head of the morningstar into the damaged part of the slab, he lays the handle over the stone as a makeshift lever and fulcrum. For a heartbeat, he breathes, then he gestures with one hand, and mutters his tuneless way through a spell.

Tjelvar’s mind clouds, anger painting everything in heat-haze, until he can barely feel anything beyond the pressure of his teeth grinding together, and then he shoves down on the morningstar’s handle as hard as he can. The nightmare burns off. Everything burns off. All he has left is fury.

Light spills in as the slab starts to lift, almost slower than Tjelvar can perceive. He struggles to judge the size of it, pushes harder, and then moves. He jabs his any-tool in as he yanks the morningstar free, can hear the metal screaming as it starts to shear apart under the weight, and then he jams the head of the morningstar into the gap, and it stops.

Without giving himself time to think, Tjelvar throws himself onto his stomach, and throws his arm out underneath. He scrabbles towards the wall at the other side, and the awareness that at any time the mass of the slab might prove too much for even the magic starts to flood through his head. He’d lose his arm. Be in an even worse place to get out.

His fingers brush against the wall, and he slaps at it, shoving his shoulder into the stone in an effort to reach further. Something gives below his touch, and there’s a wail of something mechanical and long-unused from somewhere over his head. Tjelvar flinches back into the trapped room as the slab begins to rise, and he tries to shove everything back into his bag without looking at it, too focussed on the space beyond, the light spilling in to dazzle his eyes.

Once there’s enough space, he stumbles out, kicking Edward’s morningstar ahead of him, and barely manages to avoid falling to his knees in front of Alder. They’re leaning against the edge of a dais like a leopard in a tree, the picture of carelessness but ready to drop down, claws out, the moment they have to. They’re holding a glass cutlass in one hand, examining it in the flickering illumination from the torches that their people must have put in the wall sconces.

Tjelvar glances around wildly for Edward, but all he can see is the back of one of Alder’s group, carrying something heavy and cloth-wrapped up into one of the corridors, towards what can only be daylight.

“What are you _doing_?” Tjelvar growls, the arcane rage twisting his voice into something animal.

“Tjelvar.” Alder levels the cutlass at him, and the light dazzles along the blade, catching in intricately carved patterns that swirl and shimmer down across it like oil on water. “I told you we’d cross this bridge when we came to it. We did. I did.”

Tjelvar snatches up Edward’s morningstar again, brandishes it in answer.

“What did you do?” He spits the words out like they’re acid, burning his throat on their way up. “Where’s Edward?”

Alder lowers the cutlass, and digs into one of their pockets with their other hand. They toss something towards him that gleams with the reflections of the lights, and he catches it reflexively, the one hand left holding the morningstar starting to tremble.

“You’ll need that,” they say. “I told him we’d need specialised equipment to get you out, that we had brought some but left it with our horses, and that the surface was that way.”

They gesture with the blade, towards one of the corridors that spins away from the centre of the room, where the treasure must have been.

Tjelvar glances down at the thing they’d thrown him – it’s a small flask that fits comfortably into the centre of his palm, the green glass smoothed and the label scuffed and muddied around the edges. _Water-breathing_ , it says.

“You might want to hurry,” Alder adds.

Tjelvar drops the morningstar. It hits the stone with a peal like a church bell, its reverberations shaking away the last of his manufactured anger. He runs for the corridor, the thud of his boots on the ground abruptly far-off, impossible to reach around the breaths that he can’t seem to draw in enough.

A few metres in, the corridor’s floor drops away – there’s darkness, and somewhere below, rushing water. The edges are worked, the remains of a mechanism clear in the walls.

There had been something there, before, and it had fallen, and taken Edward with it.

Tjelvar tears the stopper from the potion with his teeth, swallows the bitter liquid, is only half-aware of the bottle smashing at his feet. He hauls a coil of rope from his pack, and then flings it aside, casts without even bothering to keep his voice low. If there’s a tune there, it’s not one he ever learnt, all the notes in the wrong places and the pitch stuck somewhere guttural. The rope coils obediently around part of the mechanism and knots there, then begins to wrap around his ankle.

He dives before he’s even sure that it’s secure.

The water is a shock of cold, an impact against his face that’s so hard it almost knocks the air out of him. He pulls himself below the surface, kicking his legs up to push himself down, and forces his eyes open.

It’s all darkness, what shapes there are hazy and looming. The current is strong, already pulling Tjelvar downstream, though the rope on his ankle isn’t taut yet. He struggles against it, waiting for his eyes to adjust and trying to reason even as panic blurs further out into his mind.

Edward’s section of corridor would have been heavy, he tells himself. It wouldn’t have gone far from where it had fallen. One of those blots of shadow seems more angular than the rest – he strikes out towards it. When the water fights him, he snarls into it, bubbles streaming from his mouth, and keeps going.

One outstretched hand touches stone – he grabs for it, drags himself in closer, his ioun torch still faithfully bobbing around him, though the water seems to move so fast as to carry its illumination way before it can really do anything.

He hooks a foot underneath the thing, and starts to pat his hands over it – he finds edges, an irregular surface that seems to be a latch of some kind. No proper lock that’ll need his thieves’ tools, just something simple and secure and impossible to escape from the inside. Tjelvar swipes at it, feels it dislodge, and then scrabbles for purchase to get it open.

It all seems to take far too long. He breathes the water as easily as if it were air, but he’s all too aware that Edward won’t. The box might not be watertight. He might already be drowning, already have drowned, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was _not_ how Tjelvar had imagined kissing him for the first time.

Not that he’d imagined kissing him at all, which is clearly the problem.

Another wrench at the box, and it finally gives enough for the river to catch under the lid and throw it the rest of the way clear. In the monochrome gloom, Tjelvar can just about make out Edward’s face, grey and still, eyes closed, hair drifting in the current.

Tjelvar grabs him, hauls him out, and then kicks off for the surface.

The river doesn’t want to let them go. It drags at him, at Edward, trying to pull them back down, into the deeper dark, away from the last chamber and any hope at daylight. Tjelvar curses it, keeps going with an awkward, one-armed stroke, the other wrapped tightly around Edward. It feels like nothing, like the water will always be stronger, like there’s no way of ever overcoming it.

At his ankle, the rope jerks him to an abrupt halt, and he’s half sure that it’s that, more than anything else, that has his face break the surface.

“Edward?” he manages, between gasps. “Edward, can you hear me?”

There’s no response. Tjelvar coughs, flails about for the rope, and his head goes under again. He manages to grab the line, but nearly loses it again when he tries to get Edward’s face back above the waterline. He grips at it with his legs, tightens his hold, and begins the painstaking work of climbing.

Edward sags against him, a dead weight, lending Tjelvar’s efforts urgency, a white-out distraction from the screaming of muscles that he’s already asked far too much of. He keeps calling, stuttering out Edward’s name, hoping that any moment, he’ll splutter into life and start to ascend on his own, but there’s no response.

He doesn’t understand how it can be so far up. It had taken no time at all to fall. To his fear-quick mind, it seems like hours before they reach the hole in the floor, and he shoves Edward away into the corridor before clawing his way back onto solid ground himself. His limbs give out, screeching, but he can’t do anything but crawl the rest of the way to Edward, who lies crumpled where he’d been thrust.

There’s no one left to help. The only sign of Alder and their group are the torches around the walls and the distinct lack of treasure.

“Edward?” Tjelvar croaks – he reaches for Edward’s face, and finds it cold. Refuses to accept that there’s anything final in that, and uses the other hand to deliver the hardest strike he can muster to Edward’s chest.

Edward starts sideways, water coursing from his mouth, eyes snapping wildly open. He starts to scrabble up, but his arms won’t support him.

“Tjelvar,” he rasps, and then he just breathes, ragged and rattling and a balm to Tjelvar’s mind.

Tjelvar sighs, and his hand ghosts past Edward’s face. He pulls him into a hug, as tight as his strained muscles will let him. They sit there, soaked through and holding one another, until the chill starts to eat through their grip.

* * *

The opening of the exhibition is a formal affair. The other attendees are dressed like they’re expecting to have to give speeches, all ball gowns and immaculate, tailored suits. Edward has on the same waistcoat as he had to the Church of Hermes’ festival, and draws as many glances as the newly unveiled lost treasure of Sherden. Tjelvar, who’d received Alder Grey’s invitation the night before, is wearing his good shirt and a pointed scowl, which has so far kept anyone from trying to talk to either of them.

They spend most of the evening pressed to the fringes of the gathering – a couple of times, Tjelvar catches brief glimpses of Professor Hamilton, but he’s always clearly engaged in conversation with someone else, and besides, Tjelvar’s sure that if he were to try and talk to him, he’d only end up making a scene.

He just stands there, holding his complimentary glass of champagne and glowering, until there’s a touch at his elbow that has him spinning around, ready to dash it into someone’s face.

“Tjelvar!”

It’s Alder. They look like they belong, handsome in their own handmade three-piece, and they’re smiling as brightly as if he’d been welcomed into the gathering as a co-discoverer.

He draws them a couple of metres away from Edward, and steps in close, not bothering to keep the anger out of his expression. Somewhere in the background, a waiter balks, turns around and starts to walk in the other direction.

“You have a nerve,” Tjelvar grinds out, and their grin falters into a dramatic sigh.

“He was never in any danger.”

“Really?” Tjelvar’s voice climbs an octave with incredulity, and he forces it back down. “I’ll put you in a sinking coffin trap sometime, shall I, and we’ll see how you find it?”

“I knew you’d get him out,” Alder says, infuriatingly calm, something creeping into their tone that’s almost sympathy. “You did. If you didn’t, I would have. I was timing it. Why did you think I wasn’t carrying things out with the others? Did you _really_ want to have one of those tiresome debates about who gets to keep the artefacts?”

“I would rather that then spend _a single second_ thinking that Edward might be _dead_ ,” Tjelvar hisses, shooting a glare at a portly man who’d dared to move too close to their conversation. “You’re not infallible – he could have drowned.”

“Neither one of us would have let that happen.” Alder folds their arms, as if the slight on their competence has actually had an effect. Too bad. “If it had got too late, I’d have let you out of the trap or gone in after him myself, brought my wizard in to help. Happily ever after. Speaking of which.” They tip their head, and Tjelvar follows the gesture.

Edward is a short distance away from where Tjelvar had left him, standing awkwardly beside one of the display cases with a young woman whom it takes him a long moment to recognise as Jacqueline Grace. Edward is pointing the cutlass out to her, and she’s smiling, one hand on his arm.

Tjelvar huffs, takes a step towards them, and then glares back towards Alder, searching his mind for an acceptably scathing parting remark.

“Go on, then,” they say. “See you next time, shall I?”

“If you ever do anything like that to him again,” he manages, finally, clearing his throat halfway through and nearly losing the words in the process. “I will find a way to make sure that you can never practice archaeology again. Understand?”

Alder shrugs.

“Why don’t you go and give Miss Grace back her telescope,” they suggest, their grin starting to seep back onto their face.

Tjelvar glances towards Edward again, just as Edward looks up for him, and holds out a hand in his direction.

“Tjelvar!” he calls, a little too loudly – some of the other guests turn to shoot him glares that start off disapproving and then linger a little too long. “There you are!”

Tjelvar goes to snap out a final farewell to Alder, but they’ve already gone, vanishing into the crowd of wealthy and waiters. He shakes his head, and then crosses over to the others. Edward shifts closer to him the second he gets there, and seems to visibly brighten.

“I found Miss–”

“Jacqueline,” she reminds Edward, and offers Tjelvar a nod of greeting. “Edward tells me my grandfather was looking into all of this?”

“Yes,” Tjelvar confirms. He takes a moment to check to see if Professor Hamilton is anywhere in sight, given that introductions really do need to be made between the two, but the man’s on the other side of the room, and looks like he might be getting ready for his speech. “I doubt it would all be here without him. From what I could tell, his reaching out to Professor Hamilton is what started the whole search off.” It’s probably best not to tell her that Alder had stolen Alfred Grace’s telescope on the professor’s payroll. Instead, he just pulls it out from the inside pocket of his jacket, and offers it to her. “There. All together again.” The lens, as she had said, didn’t fit right, so he’d wrapped them both together to return.

“Thank you,” she says, and takes it. Just stands there with it in her hands for a moment, like she’s just enjoying the weight of it.

“I think,” Tjelvar says, hesitantly, trying to find the best way of wording it – he’d been running through the possibilities from the moment that he’d known she was coming, but the conversation with Alder had scattered them all from his head. “That you should possibly discuss donating that to the museum with Professor Hamilton, so that it can be displayed along with the rest of the artefacts. All this is going to be very important for his studies, and we could learn so much about the early days of the Meritocracy. Aside from that, it’s all… part of the same story. It’s easier to learn that story if it’s all together.”

She frowns, minutely, and Tjelvar stifles a grimace.

“I understand it’s not an easy decision,” he says, hurriedly. “It’s clearly of great sentimental value to you, and I’m not saying this is something you have to do–”

“No,” she says. “No, Mr Stornsnasson, I do think my grandfather would have liked that. I’ll see if I can talk to the professor about it later.” She turns slightly back towards Edward, talks to him as she tucks the telescope bundle into her bag. “Will you be staying around in Kent?” she asks. “With your church?”

“No,” Edward says, shaking his head – he’s blushing a little, Tjelvar realises, and pushes down a small flicker of outrage. “I can’t, Tjelvar and I have to go and find… something. What was it, Tjelvar?”

Tjelvar blinks. He’s not been looking into anything. His intention had been to go back to Cambridge.

“There are some excavations starting in Egypt,” he says, slowly, picking his way through it. “We could go and bother Howard Carter. Gods only know what damage he could be doing.”

“Howard Carter,” Edward says, to Miss Grace. “We need to go and find him. Very dangerous.”

“He’s more of a nuisance, really,” Tjelvar mutters.

“Oh.” Miss Grace looks as if she plans to say more, but she’s interrupted by the tapping of a fork against a glass, as Professor Hamilton starts to call together the guests for his speech. “Well good luck then – hope to see you in Kent again soon.”

“Sorry,” Edward murmurs, as she heads off towards the tables. “I shouldn’t have–”

“Well, if you want to–” Tjelvar hesitates, stumbles. “That is, I wouldn’t mind – more than that, I think I’d – what I mean to say is, Edward–”

“If you don’t want me along for things I understand–”

“Really, it’s hardly as if – um, I assumed you would–” Tjelvar coughs, as if that’s going to help him bring up anything resembling a coherent sentence. “It’s not all like that, you know. But, er, if you want to come along, you’ve proven – you can be more than useful.”

“I’m very useful,” Edward declares, studying the polished wood beneath his shoes. “Ask Hamid – you could if he was here. There’s not really anyone here you could ask. Maybe if you tried calling the professor…”

“Aside from that,” Tjelvar pushes on, a little more firmly. “I, ah – I may have come to rather enjoy your company.”

Edward blinks, his list of references trailing off into an abrupt quiet that’s hardly touched by the distant sounds of Professor Hamilton beginning his speech.

“Really?” he asks, sounds half-baffled and half-overjoyed. “Genuinely?”

“Yes, Edward, genuinely,” Tjelvar says. The idea of kissing him glances through his brain again. It’s been quietly insistent there, ever since he’d dived into the underground river, to the point where it almost feels dishonest, not to do it. Not to say anything about it.

“Wicked,” Edward manages. “I… I.” He stops, frowns towards Professor Hamilton as though he’s actually trying to hear what’s being said. “Thanks, Tjelvar.”

Tjelvar’s expression twitches, as he tries to push away something that he’s on the edge of feeling. Thinks about how kissing Edward would work, here. Whether Edward would want that, with all these people present. Maybe, he thinks, they could go outside, and have a stroll together in the dark, and find somewhere where they can just be them.

Then he remembers his dreams of blue veins. Of Edward, alone in Rome. He shelves it all, quietly, keeps it for later, for when the world and he himself have recovered enough. For when he can feel sure that nothing else is looking at Edward with his eyes.

“That’s quite all right,” he says. He holds out a hand – the gesture feels too stiff, too formal, but Edward takes it with smile bright as the midsummer sun. “Looking forward to working with you.”

Edward doesn’t reply, but his grip on Tjelvar’s hand as they shake on it says what it needs to. The _why_ still trying to burn itself out at the back of Tjelvar’s mind fades a little, the edges of it softening.

He realises he’s held on entirely too long, and drops the contact, clears his throat quietly. Edward turns smartly towards Professor Hamilton, who’s still talking, making some expansive gesture towards one of the display cases.

“Do you think they’ll mention us?” he asks. “We did help find it all.”

“I imagine our names will be kept well out of it,” Tjelvar tells him. He’s never been in a situation like this where the first to the artefacts had deigned to mention the efforts of their rivals at all, even when things had gone far better than with Alder – just a few disagreements over permits, or something, rather than a potential drowning. “Does that bother you?”

“No.” Edward shrugs. “Not what matters. What about you?”

“Recognition opens doors,” Tjelvar tells him, fighting the impulse to ask exactly what it is that Edward feels matters. It would probably only end up being something to do with Apollo. “Before the... before, Hannibal’s tomb was helping.”

“Well,” Edward says. “Plenty of time for more of that.”

_Plenty of time_ , Tjelvar echoes, silently, pastes it over the part of his head that feels he might be wasting it. _Plenty_. First, Egypt, and then, well. He’ll see where it takes them.


End file.
